Donald Trump open to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok

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Donald Trump open to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying TikTok

Portrait of Rebecca Morin Rebecca Morin

USA TODAY

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is open to Elon Musk buying TikTok, and floated a proposal that the United States jointly own half the corporation.

“I would be, if he wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump told reporters at a White House occurrence announcing a recent AI infrastructure private sector collaboration with tech leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, emerged as a potential buyer days before the application was set to shut down. Trump on Monday issued an executive order that halts enforcement of a ban on the mega popular video app for 75 days.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2025.

The app briefly shut down for a little more than 12 hours on Saturday evening after the Supreme Court upheld a law that requires TikTok’s parent corporation, ByteDance, to sell American TikTok assets so it can keep operating in the United States.

The president said he’s also open to another tech giant to acquire TikTok: Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle. Ellison was now at the White House for a $500 billion AI infrastructure collaboration between the Trump administration and OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle. Oracle, a software corporation, houses most of TikTok’s servers

 “I have the correct to make a deal,” Trump said to Ellison. “Let’s discuss in front of the media.”

After conference with TikTok’s owners, Trump said he suggested to them that a corporation should buy it and provide half to the United States’ government. Trump on Monday suggested 50% ownership of the app, which has 170 million Americans users.

“They’ll have something that’s actually more valuable because they have the ultimate associate, and the United States will make it very worthwhile for them in terms of the permits and everything else,” Trump said.

When asked whether he has TikTok on his phone, Trump said “no, but I ponder I might put it there.”

“We won the youthful vote. I ponder I won it through TikTok,” Trump said. “So I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok.”

According to exit polls, former Vice President Kamala Harris won voters under 30-years-ancient, with 54% to Trump’s 43%.

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