In just a few hours, former U.S. President Donald Trump's first video on TikTok garnered hundreds of thousands of views. The number of followers for Trump's new account, which he launched late Saturday night, surpassed 800,000 by the time of this writing.
The Lone Video
The single video posted by the account @realdonaldtrump received over 910,000 likes on the platform owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance. In the first shot of the short video, lasting no more than 13 seconds, UFC President Dana White appeared to announce that Trump is now on TikTok. The Republican candidate responded, "It's an honor for me." Trump concluded the video with a brief statement, saying, "Our journey has been pretty good, hasn't it?"
335,000 for Biden's Campaign
In comparison, the follower count for the current President Joe Biden's campaign account, launched in February, does not exceed 335,000, even though the account has more than 4.5 million likes.
It is worth noting that the former Republican president was among the first to call for a ban on TikTok in the United States in 2020, issuing an executive order at the time demanding strict measures against TikTok's owners to protect national security. However, U.S. courts halted that order at the time.
Later, Trump softened his stance on TikTok. In March 2024, he opposed Congress's move to ban TikTok, stating that this step could strengthen competing apps like Facebook and other platforms he has criticized as well.
ByteDance is still embroiled in a legal battle against a U.S. law that went into effect in April, which requires the company to sell TikTok by January or face a ban. This is particularly significant as the White House is determined to end the company's ownership of the platform on national security grounds, according to its claims.
