TrickTok

At first, it looked like TikTok was going to be banned. Then it appeared it might be saved. Then it looked like it would be banned with the promise of it being saved. Then it was banned. Then it was saved. I mean, sort of.

Welcome to day minus-one of the new Trump administration, folks. Buckle up.

To be clear and fair, the Biden administration seemingly had a lot to do with the bungling of this situation. Perhaps even more so as in the final hours before the ban was implemented, they were seemingly promising that they would not administer the law, before ultimately just passing the buck to the incoming Trump team.

Just a total clusterfuck.

In rides the clusterfuck cowboy... Donald Trump lives for this stuff. It's complete and utter chaos and that is fertile ground for a deal. Or several deals. TikTok clearly put their eggs in the Trump basket, flying down to Mar a Lago to bend the knee, making the $1M fealty payment, and sponsoring a key inauguration party. That seems wise as the Biden administration was clearly hapless and helpless here.

And so when TikTok went dark on Sunday, there was an almost immediate promise that it would be back once Trump was sworn in on Monday. But that clearly wasn't good enough, as further Trump promises let to it coming back online mere hours after the ban. Again, these are the promises of a person who is not yet President. Promises which are not legally binding. In part because it's not clear they can be legally binding, as it's not clear that an executive order can even just postpone such a law. There are perhaps ways it can, but it's not clear any of those criteria will have been met.

Honestly, I'm not sure it matters. Does anyone really believe that Oracle is going to go bankrupt over this? Even if they technically and legally could, there's no way that's going to be enforced. Less because of Trump's word, more because no one has any clue what is going on right now. Have I mentioned the new administration starts tomorrow?¹

This is all so comically chaotic that it almost feels intentional. Almost as if TikTok knew that while they didn't need to pull-the-plug today, doing so would create pressure on all sides to act. And perhaps the Trump team, recognizing this telegraphed dynamic – and, crucially, wanting the service to be back online in time for the inauguration – struck a deal. Or rather, a handshake. TikTok would take down the service for a few hours and then Trump would weigh in with definitive statements to "save" it – provided the appropriate praise was bestowed upon the incoming President in a message that millions upon millions would see upon loading the app. And here we are.

Now for the hard part: figuring out an actual deal. Again, if I'm just sort of thinking out loud here, doesn't it seem possible that the Trump team could have struck the above agreement with the TikTok team, but did so without China's sign off? And that matters because China will ultimately have to sign off on any deal. (And this is a nice F-you by TikTok back at you-know-who.) Oh yeah, as will ByteDance. This is not a normal deal, to say the least. Both China and ByteDance maintain they're not doing a deal. Has Trump changed their minds? I mean, maybe? But all I'm saying is that all of today's antics easily could have gone down without any of that required.

And to make matters even more confusing and clusterfucked, it seems like Trump is now shifting the goalposts on such a deal. As he noted today, he wants the US to have at least a 50% stake in a JV put in place under any such deal. But that's just one read of his confusing usage of the English language. Another read is that he wants the US government to be a part-owner of the JV alongside whatever American company they deem to be the right fit to do this deal.

I mean, maybe that's just a typo. Or maybe he didn't understand what he was saying. Such a structure would be... strange. To say the least! Not very American. Decidedly more socialist. But you cannot simply dismiss it, as people have so quickly forgotten that back in 2020 – when then-President Trump moved to ban the very same TikTok, he did so with the notion that an American company should buy it and pay a fee to the US government for the deal. I mean, this really was the idea put out there! And no less than Microsoft was happy to jump at it!

No deal happened back then, of course. But it wasn't for a lack of trying. But again, all of this should showcase... I don't know. Something.

Perhaps we'll know more tomorrow. It's entirely possible we'll know less. At least by then the actual four more years clock will start ticking. And tocking.

¹ Perhaps you saw the other bit of news this evening, buried under 400 feet of TikTok news, that Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-lead of DOGE alongside Elon Musk, will be stepping down from that post, before it even starts. Again, buckle up, folks.