Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser and campaign manager for Donald Trump, had admitted the former President has not told Congress to oppose efforts to force Chinese-owned ByteDance to divest itself from TikTok or face a ban on the social media app in the U.S.
“I don’t know a single Member of Congress that Donald Trump called and said, ‘Please vote against this ban,’” Conway said on POLITICO’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast. Conway has recently been retained as a lobbyist for the China-owned TikTok via the establishment ‘Club for Growth’, which Trump correctly refers to as the Club for China Growth.
The former White House adviser said she believes Trump is concerned that addressing the issue of TikTok without tackling abuses by domestic technology companies will only empower Big Tech barons like Mark Zuckerberg. Conway highlighted the Trump 2016 campaign’s strategic use of social media to counter Hillary Clinton’s financial and advertising advantage. She added that figures like Mark Zuckerberg took a lot of heat for not shutting down Trump’s 2016 social media strategy and eventually moved to counter it during the 2020 presidential election — unfairly disadvantaging the former President.
“He feels if Zuckerberg or even another social media company consolidates that power, we’re creating tech barons by having Mark Zuckerberg potentially in charge of Facebook, Instagram, and now Tiktok,” Conway told POLITICO, underscoring Trump’s concern that the forced TikTok sale could serve to benefit the Facebook founder.
While there has been speculation that Facebook could attempt to purchase TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, other investors have come forward with their own purchase proposals. Microsoft — one of the buyers for TikTok considered during the Trump Treasury Department’s efforts to force ByteDance’s divestment of the app — is believed to be still interested in the purchase. Likewise, former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin announced he’s assembling a group of investors to make a play for TikTok as well should ByteDance agree to divestment.