The “No Kings” protest was a joke, with Democrat activists pushing their pet causes and impotently screaming into the political void. However, there is one area of President Donald Trump’s administration, though, where he is clearly acting beyond his powers: TikTok.
In April 2024, Congress passed a bill mandating that the social media app be divested from its Chinese Communist Party-aligned ownership, ByteDance, or be banned in the United States. That bill was signed into law by former President Joe Biden, and it contained a one-time deadline extension for ByteDance to sell TikTok if negotiations with another company were already in progress. The deadline for the sale was Jan. 19, 2025.
Instead, Trump granted an extension despite no clear negotiations that would lead to an imminent sale. Trump was so devoted to keeping TikTok up and running that he was planning on how to do so before he even took office, and he invited the CEO of TikTok to sit on the dais at his inauguration. When Trump’s first 75-day extension expired, he issued another one on April 4, which is not permitted under the law as Congress passed it. That deadline will hit this coming Thursday, when Trump plans to issue yet another unauthorized, illegal extension so that the app can remain running in the U.S.
THREE ISSUES ON WHICH TRUMP HAS DONE A TOTAL 180 COMPARED TO HIS FIRST TERM
Trump is ignoring a law passed by Congress, all to pander to a Chinese spyware app that funnels American data to the Chinese government and serves as a liberal propaganda dispensary here in the U.S. Congress is ignoring that Trump is ignoring this law, as they are all content to pretend they didn’t pass it so they don’t generate some feared backlash among the teenagers who use the app. This is the only area where you can reasonably argue Trump is acting like a “king.” And neither Democratic members of Congress nor the Democratic activists in the streets care, because they all like the outcome.
This is an actual abuse of power, but no one cares because the spyware app run by a hostile foreign power has funny dance videos and an addictive algorithm. TikTok must be banned, and Trump’s willingness to ignore the law is a glaring issue with his presidency thus far.