Donald Trump joined TikTok over the weekend and has already surpassed US President Joe Biden on the hugely popular app, but will Trump’s actions on the brand have a meaningful impact?
In July 2020, Donald Trump, then president of the United States, announced that he was banning TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, divested its interest in the shortform video app.
In June 2024, Donald Trump, now a convicted felon but campaigning for a second shot at the White House, has joined TikTok.
It’s an astounding about-turn for a man who has also switched his opinion on whether the app should be regulated out of existence. In 2020, he spearheaded a legal battle funded by the US government to try and compel a TikTok fire sale; in 2024, he’s now said he believes it should remain running.
It is an indication though that he – and his opponent, current president Joe Biden, who has backed a cross-party plan to compel ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok over unspecified ‘national security’ concerns due to links to China – see it as an important battleground for the ongoing presidential campaign. Both are posting on it, despite their current or past misgivings about its safety.
“It was inevitable that Trump would join TikTok as despite the various, often dubious, claims made about the platform by others in the Republican party, it is where many young people get information these days,” said Steven Buckley, lecturer in media and communication at City, University of London, who specialises in US politics and social media.
It was also a given that Trump would join TikTok given his opponent in the 2024 race is also on the app – despite having misgivings about its future in the country. “Ignoring the platform would be ceding an entire political battleground to the Biden campaign,” said Buckley.
Indeed, the indications that Trump might join TikTok because he didn’t want to give Biden free rein to campaign uncontested were there a month ago, when Trump’s own super PAC, or campaign group, MAGA Inc, joined TikTok in May.
READ ALSO:
Biden’s son Hunter and first lady Jill Biden arrive for jury selection in his federal gun case
Then, Taylor Budowich, the CEO of the super PAC, posted on X that the organisation “will not cede any platform to Joe Biden and the Democrats who are trying to destroy our country.” He added: “We will ensure President Trump’s America First agenda is brought to every corner of the internet and every precinct of this country.”
Despite Trump’s TikTok account being just over a day old, and only posting one video – taken at a UFC event in New Jersey over the weekend – the former president is already outstripping Biden on the app. He has more followers than Biden, despite spending far less time on the app. And his sole video, compared to Biden’s 210-odd posts on TikTok, has a stunning 61 million views to date.
Those are numbers the Biden campaign will look on at with envy. But the key question is whether online hype – and there has been plenty around Trump joining TikTok – can translate into real-world votes.
Possibly, suggests Nick Anstead, associate professor of political communication at the London School of Economics. But it’s unlikely to make a significant difference, given Trump’s already public profile, and the way that his utterances are already covered by the press.
“Ultimately, he has proved in his use of Twitter in recent years that he was a very effective communicator on those platforms and – perhaps most importantly – has the ability to generate mainstream media comment on his campaign,” he said.
Anstead points out that while Twitter – now X, which Trump notably hasn’t yet rejoined despite being told by Elon Musk his ban following the 6 January 2021 riots on the US Capitol has been overturned – has plenty of mainstream journalists using it, and tracking posts Trump used to make on it, TikTok hasn’t yet reached that level of journalistic adoption.
“It won’t generate the kind of ripple effects that other platforms do,” he said.
However, Anstead added: “we know the demographics of TikTok users are very different, so it does give him the potential to speak to a different audience.”
TikTok itself says more than 150 million Americans use the app, including 62 per cent of those aged 18 to 29, according to the Pew Research Centre. And while those users may be slightly different to the norm that watches mainstream media, Buckley is equally uncertain whether TikTok is going to propel Trump to the White House.
“It’s unlikely his joining of the platform will have any meaningful impact on his election chances given that there are far bigger factors at play,” Buckley said.
“If his team is to consistently post the same sort of content he posts on other platforms, then it will likely just reconfirm people’s views on him. They will either loathe him or love him more.”
