Trump disclosed the executive order on the Truth Social platform Thursday morning.
“He’s making an extension so we can get this deal done,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “It’s wildly popular. He also wants to protect Americans’ data and privacy concerns on this app. And he believes we can do both at the same time.”
TikTok praised Trump for signing an extension Thursday.
“We are grateful for President Trump’s leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available for more than 170 million American users and 7.5 million U.S. businesses that rely on the platform as we continue to work with Vice President Vance’s Office,” the company said in a statement.
Jeremy Goldman, analyst at Emarketer, called TikTok’s U.S situation a “deadline purgatory.”
The whole thing “is starting to feel less like a ticking clock and more like a looped ringtone. This political Groundhog Day is starting to resemble the debt ceiling drama: a recurring threat with no real resolution.”
That’s not stopping TikTok from pushing forward with its platform, Forrester analyst Kelsey Chickering says.
Americans are even more closely divided on what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns over users’ data security being at risk as a major factor in their decision, according to the report.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Trump administration is once again “flouting the law and ignoring its own national security findings about the risks” posed by a China-controlled TikTok.
“An executive order can’t sidestep the law, but that’s exactly what the president is trying to do,” Warner added.
