Trump joins TikTok, the platform he once tried to ban while president

Former President Donald Trump joined the app TikTok on Saturday.

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Trump’s account shared its first video Saturday while he attended the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) card in New Jersey, according to The New York Times.

“The president is now on TikTok,” UFC CEO Dana White said in the video, according to CNN.

“It’s an honor,” Trump responded, according to the Times. The video shows him waving to fans and taking selfies at the UFC event, The Associated Press reported.

Trump gained more than 1.1 million followers on TikTok by Sunday morning, according to the AP. His post received more than 1 million likes and has views around 24 million times.

The hope is that Trump can reach younger voters through the platform for his campaign for the presidency, Reuters reported.

“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement about joining TikTok, according to the AP.

“There’s no place better than a UFC event to launch President Trump’s Tik Tok, where he received a hero’s welcome and thousands of fans cheered him on,” he added.

Biden’s campaign has been using the platform already even though Biden signed a bill recently that would ban TikTok if ByteDance, which China owns, does not sell it, according to Reuters.

When Trump was president, he reportedly tried to ban the platform in 2020 but it was the courts blocked it, according to Reuters.

Last Thursday, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Sentencing is set for July 11. Trump is reportedly planning to appeal his conviction.

Trump became the first former president in the history of the United States to be found guilty of federal charges, the AP reported.

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