Trump Puts Out a Fire He Set

If you use TikTok, you’ll know that the app shut down last night. By this afternoon, if curiosity, rage, or nostalgia compelled you to re-open the app, you would have received a pop-up notification that read:

How miraculous. Trump swooped in as the white knight to save TikTok. Of course, this would carry a bit more significance if the whole debacle surrounding whether or not to ban TikTok hadn’t been started by…Donald Trump. Yes, the very same white knight.

Seems unlikely? I encourage you to marvel at this montage of Trump repeatedly bragging about banning TikTok.

In 2020, Trump signed an executive order effectively banning the app in the US. Any transactions between TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens were outlawed for national security reasons. In other words, we’ve landed here because Trump was the pilot.

When TikTok posts issuing groveling praise for Trump’s leadership or presenting him as some savior, what’s conspicuously absent is a large disclaimer at the bottom, informing consumers that Trump was indeed the source behind the ban. Of course, no one in the media or at TikTok wants to acknowledge that reality, because part of the whole deal with bending the knee is agreeing to abandon, or at least ignore, your own principles in order to adopt whatever fabricated reality the Godking wants you to endorse.

Just as Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Elon did, Shou Zi Chew (TikTok’s CEO) is offering Trump the effusive praise he expects. Make no mistake, he is fully on board the circus train. In fact, Shou will attend tonight’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally. Which is a solid reminder that we need to prepare ourselves for the following transaction, on repeat: Do Trump’s bidding; collect special treatment (until, of course, you become dispensable to him, at which point he won’t care if you go to jail, are sent to the gallows, etc. The entire big tech oligarchy got the memo; Shou and TikTok are just following suit. If you want to play in Trump’s America, you have to make a big show of your fealty, then sign on to perpetuate the gaslighting. That’s what happened today, and it’s what will continue happening, unchecked.

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Of course, this cognitive dissonance was put on full display across the rightwing media ecosystem. Charlie Kirk tweeted his effusive praise of Dear Leader:

“Trump is saving TikTok. Pay attention Gen Z.”

Gen Z is paying attention, though probably not to Charlie Kirk. Regardless, they’re savvy enough that they might also take into account THIS tweet, ALSO from Charlie Kirk in 2020:

“President @realDonaldTrump just announced on Air Force One that he will be banning the evil CCP-compromised app TikTok. America can't continue to allow our citizens to be surveilled by Xi Jinping and his terroristic cronies. I have long advocated for this. Fight back!”

Though Kirk’s flagrant duplicity place him right within Trump’s brand, he’s not alone. Trump national security pick, Mike Waltz showed up on CNN to praise the app as “fantastic,” despite calling it Spyware last year on Fox.

Ryan Fournier gushed: “Very Happy to see TikTok was unbanned in the United States. Should’ve never happened to begin with! Make america great again!”

Remarkably, that’s the same guy who, in 2022, tweeted: “Ban TikTok.”

There are countless examples of this hypocrisy. Pay attention, Trump supporters. Because here’s the simple truth: These people think you’re stupid. They create a problem, then take steps to untangle the knot that they themselves tied. Then, once they or others untie it, they expect fawning credit for doing so in the first place. If I set fire to a building but am the first one to arrive with a hose to put it out, are you going to hail me as a hero? I sure hope not.

What makes this whole sham sabotage even worse is that President Biden actually came out and said that he wouldn’t enforce the TikTok ban. And yet still, TikTok executed its whole big performative shutdown and went dark, only to bring the app back within 24 hours, branded with some effusive pro-Trump praise. Just another public spectacle of bending the knee. This whole thing—the disruption to service, the notices, the drama—was all just a calculated move executed for an audience of one: Donald Trump.

That doesn’t mean that Democrats are off the hook here. Being so oblivious to the consequences of this very predictable play is not necessarily tantamount to being complicit, but we’re not going to get through the next four years without being a bit more savvy and prepared to call out these scams. 170 million Americans are on TikTok. It is monumentally popular, with many relying on it for their livelihoods and their source for news. Dems should have foreseen that voting to ban TikTok would be met with fierce resistance. And yes, they did it with the help of Republicans, and the vote was 50-0, but Biden signed the bill into law. Which meant that they handed Trump a perfect opportunity to swoop in and reverse the damage that HE had caused because as we all should know very well at this point, Trump is only in it for Trump and for receiving credit. How could anybody be surprised that that is precisely what happened here? Democrats need to understand the media environment and understand that it’s not enough to say “trust us,” because frankly, very few people trust the government. If you’re not going to factor this reality into account, then you can’t be surprised when you’re forced to contend with the consequences of it.

On this topic, AOC brought up one of the most important points here:

In other words, Big Tech would never allow for comprehensive privacy legislation. They can’t, because our data is what they sell. This is chief among the reasons why the owners of these companies are all so eager to get into Trump’s good graces: because their primary offering is only as safe as the next administration’s willingness to protect it. And, as of tomorrow, we will have a president who is oh so willing to be bought…to the tune of millions and millions of dollars per company. TikTok, Meta, X, the Washington Post, Amazon, the LA Times—nearly every social media platform, and most of our legacy media outlets—are owned by people who decided to fall all over themselves, heaping money and praise at Trump’s feet.

When we say oligarchy, this is what it looks like. The richest people in America, who own every platform and algorithm on which we all communicate, are openly in the tank for Trump and his GOP. And he knows it.