Bannon Suggests Trump Flip-Flopped on TikTok Ban to Please GOP Mega Donor

Former President Donald Trump raised eyebrows in recent days with his flip-flop on banning the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok.

Last week Trump posted to his Truth Social account, “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business.”

“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better,” he added. “They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump made the post after meeting with GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass, a hedge fund billionaire who owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. In 2020, Trump led the effort to ban TikTok in the U.S., citing national security concerns.

The connection between Yass and TikTok did not go unnoticed by former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser Steve Bannon, who suggested in a social media post of his own that Yass’s deep pockets was behind Trump’s newfound appreciation for TikTok.

Bannon shared an Axios article titled, “Inside Trump’s TikTok flip-flop,” and added, “Simple: Yass Coin.”

Axios detailed Trump’s apparent conversion on TikTok, having long warned that the company could be a kind of Trojan Horse spying on behalf of China and working to radicalize America’s youth against the country. The article also connected Yass’s monetary support to opposing a ban on TikTok:

Yass had previously donated $4.9 million to Vivek Ramaswamy, who last year became the only Republican presidential candidate to join TikTok — an app he once called “digital fentanyl.”

On Monday morning, Trump denied on CNBC that he spoke to Yass about TikTok when the two met at a Club For Growth retreat. “No, I didn’t,” Trump said, claiming he and Yass only spoke briefly. “He never mentioned TikTok.”