Donald Trump says that he would be open to Elon Musk and Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok.
Trump said, “Larry let’s negotiate before the media,” at a press event with the Oracle cofounder, SoftBank CEO Masa son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to announce a $500 Billion Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Investment. “I’m thinking of saying to someone, buy it and give half of it to the United States of America. We’ll give you half and the permit. And they’ll be a great partner with the United States.”
Ellison said, “Sounds good to me, Mr. president.”
There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how this would all work or how the US would legally operate a platform for speech without violating First Amendment. It’s one of the first examples of how Silicon Valley could be cozy with Trump over the next four-year period.
Trump issued an executive order Monday instructing his government not to enforce the law against service providers covered under the forced divestiture legislation — which includes Oracle, Apple, Google — for 75 day. Legal experts say that the executive order is not enough to protect these companies from violating federal law and facing $850 billion in penalties. Oracle appears to have relied on Trump’s assurances in order to help TikTok continue to operate in the US following the January 19th deadline for sale, although the company hasn’t commented directly on the matter.
TikTok’s China-based parent, ByteDance, still has other offers, including billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty, and now, it appears, from YouTube creator MrBeast – whose investor group receives legal counsel from a team that includes the brother of Trump’s attorney general nominee.
A reporter asked Trump as he left the briefing if he had TikTok installed on his phone. Trump replied, “No, but it’s something I think I could add.” “I think I will get it right away.”
