The New York Post Warns Trump Not to Save TikTok: ‘Mr. President-Elect, Don’t Sell Out’

The New York Post argued that President-elect Donald Trump would be guilty of selling out and “hypocrisy” if he stepped in to save TikTok in an editorial published on Tuesday night.

While Trump used to forthrightly support a ban on the Chinese-owned app, he changed his tune on the 2024 campaign trail.

“FOR ALL OF THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!” he wrote on Truth Social in September.

More recently, he met with the social media company’s CEO, Shou Chew, at Mar-a-Lago and told reporters that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok.”

The Post does not look kindly upon this development, leading its editorial off with some straightforward advice: “Mr. President-elect, don’t sell out on a TikTok ban: The app is a Chinese state influence op, and you were elected on a promise to get tough when social media companies collude with governments.”

After making note of the “noises” Trump has been making about how “he might throw the company a lifeline” as a ban set to take effect on January 19 approaches (unless its Chinese parent company sells it) the Post enumerated its grievances against TikTok:

But TikTok is a tool of China’s massive surveillance state.

One of the company’s board seats is filled by a government appointee.

The vast troves of user data the social app collects, including private messages?

There for the CCP’s perusal; the company’s already admitted that its employees in China were using the data to track US journos.

(Imagine what it hasn’t fessed up to.)

ByteDance has major ties to China’s defense sector, including running an AI academy explicitly for military purposes.

Crucially, ByteDance owns the addictive algorithm that’s been key to Tik Tok’s success (and destruction) and won’t let it fall out of CCP-controlled hands.

That’s damning all by itself.

And that’s to say nothing about the app’s power to promote whatever content Beijing sees fit.

It’s a massive soft-power intelligence operation, in other words, running right out in the open — even as it damages and demoralizes American kids.

“Trump may claim a ‘warm spot’ in his heart for the app, and he would’ve been impressed by the views he drove during the election. But winning the fight against the Big Tech-Big Gov combine — as he has promised to do — means winning battles like this,” it concluded. “Anything less would be hypocrisy.”