Trump invokes Charlie Kirk amid TikTok negotiations with China

President Donald Trump on Friday credited the late Charlie Kirk while announcing a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to keep TikTok available in the U.S.

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump shared that he had a successful phone call with Jinping on Friday morning in which he reached a deal to keep the social media platform available to American users by divesting some of its ownership to U.S. business leaders.

He said that Chinese leaders, American youth and even conservative leaders wanted to keep the platform available in the U.S.

“The TikTok deal is well on its way,” he said.

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He noted the platform’s popularity among American youth and emphasized that Kirk encouraged its use to engage with young people.

“Charlie was very much in favor of TikTok; he liked TikTok,” he added. “He said, you know, ‘you should use it.’”

Trump credited Kirk for leveraging social media platforms like TikTok to get “massive numbers of youth” out to vote for him and Republicans in 2024.

“If you take a look at my numbers, no Republican has ever done anything like it. We got massive numbers of youth, and by the way, helped very much by Charlie Kirk,” he said, adding, “It probably had a pretty big effect on the election because we won the election by a lot.”

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This comes as Trump has repeatedly delayed implementing a law passed by Congress in 2024 to ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it divests its ownership of U.S. operations from China to America.

Following his negotiations with Jinping, Trump said TikTok’s U.S. operations will be “controlled by very powerful and very substantial American people, all American.”

“It’s a great deal for our country. It’s a great deal for all of the young people in the country and for people generally,” he said.

Trump acknowledged his initial opposition to TikTok, saying, “I wasn’t a fan of TikTok, and then I got to use it, and I became a fan, and it helped me win the election in a landslide.”

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“I had a great call with President Xi and, as you know, we approved the TikTok deal, and we’re in the process. We have some great investors, some of the biggest in the world, American investors, great people, and we look forward to getting that deal closed,” he said.  

Pressed on whether the deal is fully approved, Trump answered, “I think so. And when you say fully approved, I don’t know what that means, we have to get it signed, I guess. I guess it could be a formality. I found his word to be very good.”

“They wanted to see it,” he said of China, “and I can tell you, the young people in our country wanted to see it stay open very badly.”