WASHINGTON — Former US president Donald Trump on Saturday joined TikTok, a video social media platform that he tried to ban as president on national security grounds, attracting 3 million followers.
“It’s my honor,” Trump said in a video post, which showed the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee waving to the audience at an Ultimate Fighting Championship game in Newark, the most populous city in the US state of New Jersey.
To date, Trump has rapidly attracted more than 3 million followers. His debut post garnered around 33 million views within 12 hours and has now received over 2.9 million likes.
Trump is currently embroiled in a series of criminal and civil lawsuits at the federal and local levels.
He became the first former president in US history convicted of a crime after a jury in New York on Thursday found him guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a bid to hide hush money payment to a porn star in 2016, shortly before the presidential election.
Trump’s 2024 presidential contender, US President Joe Biden, had already launched a TikTok account in February with over 340,000 followers so far.
TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance filed a legal challenge on May 7 against the US government over a law forcing ByteDance to sell off the ultra-popular app or face a nationwide ban in the country. Biden signed a TikTok ban bill into law in April after both houses of US Congress passed it.
The TikTok ban, citing unfounded national security concerns due to its Chinese ownership, has drawn widespread criticism from various quarters both within and outside the United States, with people questioning the motivations behind Washington’s suppression of the popular app, and raising concerns about constitutional rights and the principle of fair competition being violated.