Trump bats for China’s TikTok app, urges top court to pause ban to pursue ‘political’ route

In an unusual brief submitted to the US Supreme Court, President-elect Donald Trump requested that the apex body to block the law requiring the video-sharing app TikTok to be sold or shut down by January 19. Interestingly, the deadline for the app to be possibly banned falls before Trump assumes the Oval Office. In the brief, Trump asked the court to delay the case so that he could address the matter when he entered the White House.

“President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture,” the brief said, “and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.” According to The New York Times, the brief took no position on the legal question that the justices are set to hear. The court will hear the first set of arguments in the case next month.

The justices will be determining whether Congress violated the First Amendment by effectively banning TikTok. The brief submitted by Trump’s team mentioned his expertise in the matter. “President Trump alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise, the electoral mandate and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” the brief said.

The filing mentioned that Trump is knowledgeable about social media in general and TikTok in particular. “President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific and influential users of social media in history,” the brief said. “Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech,” it furthered.

TikTok moves court to prevent its ban

In its own briefing submitted on Friday, TikTok told the Supreme Court the controversial law violated the First Amendment enshrined in the American Constitution. TikTok argued that the banning of the app would stifle the speech of 170 million American users based on mere speculation about potential Chinese national security threats.

“The government has banned an extraordinary amount of speech; demands deference to unsubstantiated predictions a future risk will materialize; and gets facts wrong when it bothers to provide them,” the brief said. “Congress’s unprecedented attempt to single out petitioners and bar them from operating one of the nation’s most significant speech venues is profoundly unconstitutional,” the app furthered.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden’s administration responded to the accusations by maintaining that the law passed with bipartisan congressional majorities, was grounded in the reality of a foreign adversary poised to gather users’ data and spread disinformation.

Biden’s team argued that the law “addresses the serious threats to national security posed by the Chinese government’s control of TikTok, a platform that harvests sensitive data about tens of millions of Americans and would be a potent tool for covert influence operations by a foreign adversary.”

Meanwhile, a separate brief filed on behalf of users of the service acknowledged that the United States was in the midst of an “intense geopolitical competition” with China. However, it argued that “stripping millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights” was not the right way to go about things.

“Nothing like the act here has ever been countenanced,” the brief said, “and its suppression of Americans’ speech flies in the face of our history, tradition and precedent.” Now in an effort to dissolve the case by January 19, the Supreme Court will hear all the arguments at a special session which is scheduled to take place on January 10.

With inputs from agencies.