The New York Times reports:

Four years ago, President Donald J. Trump denounced TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing app, as a threat to America’s national security. This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to retake the White House, he called it a “unique medium for freedom of expression.”

The comment was part of a brief he filed to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to pause a ban on TikTok set to take effect next month so that he could “negotiate a resolution” to save the platform.

A law passed with wide bipartisan support and signed by President Biden in April calls for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to sell the app to a non-Chinese company or face a ban in the United States because of its risk to national security and free speech. The justices are considering the company’s challenge to that law.

TikTok has said the law violates the First Amendment. It also says that its corporate parent is majority-owned by global investors.

The Biden administration and members of Congress argue that the platform’s Chinese ownership compromises U.S. security because of the vast amount of user tracking and data collection it performs, and because of the risk that Beijing could use the app to spread propaganda.

That was Mr. Trump’s position, too, before he became a political star on TikTok, where he now has more than 14.7 million followers.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist, noted that Mr. Trump’s U-turn puts him at odds with many Republicans who remain worried about China’s ownership of the app.

“It is hard to believe that Trump’s TikTok flip-flop is about anything much more than the influence of a billionaire donor and Trump’s reluctance to give up his access to his followers on the platform,” Mr. Garin said, referring to Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor who owns a significant share of ByteDance. “As with nearly everything Trump does, his change of position is driven by self-interest, not principle or the national interest.” [Continue reading…]