The last time Donald Trump was in the White House, the Republican made no effort to hide his opposition to TikTok. In fact, it was just four years ago when he announced plans to go after the platform, and an executive order soon followed. That policy ultimately failed in the courts, but Trump was explicit in arguing that the app should not exist on Americans’ phones.
“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” the then-president said during his 2020 re-election campaign.
Trump, true to form, ended up reversing course after chatting with a billionaire hedge fund manager — and prospective campaign donor — who had a multibillion-dollar stake in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent corporation. The Biden administration, however, stuck to Trump’s original position and advanced a policy that would effectively ban TikTok in 2025.
The move sparked litigation, and the case is currently pending at the U.S. Supreme Court. As NBC News reported, it was against this backdrop that the president-elect’s lawyers filed a curious brief.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause implementation of a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. starting Jan. 19 if the app is not sold by its Chinese parent company. The court is due to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10.
Ordinarily in a court filing such as this one, we’d expect to see an argument urging the justices to rule one way or another based on legal merits. But in the filing from D. John Sauer — the president-elect’s lawyer who’s slated to be nominated for U.S. solicitor general — Team Trump instead asked the high court to simply delay the current law’s deadline in order to allow the incoming administration to pursue a new and different policy.
This is, to be sure, a strange approach to jurisprudence. But I was also intrigued by the specific pitch included in the court filing.
“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 same filing went on to describe the president-elect as “one of the most powerful, prolific and influential users of social media in history.”
In terms of errors of judgment, it’s hard to even know where to start with such over-the-top boasts, but I was especially intrigued by the idea that Trump has unique “deal-making expertise.” It’s a line that’s come up repeatedly of late, largely because it’s one of the more persistent myths in GOP politics.
During the recent mess surrounding a possible government shutdown, for example, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said Trump “understands negotiations better than any president we’ve ever had.” Around the same time, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham asserted as fact that the president is “the best negotiator … in the United States.”
I’m mindful of the fact that the public is certainly supposed to believe this, but has anyone seen any evidence at all that Trump has had any success as a political dealmaker?
As a candidate in 2016, Trump told Fox News, “The problem with Washington, they don’t make deals. It’s all gridlock. And then you have a president that signs executive orders because he can’t get anything done. I’ll get everybody together.” It was a familiar boast. Indeed, not long before launching his campaign in 2015, the Republican identified this as his greatest strength. “Deals are my art form,” Trump claimed. “Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.” After the election, the White House bought into the hype. In 2019, then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, “The president is, I think, the ultimate negotiator and dealmaker.” But the evidence of Trump actually succeeding on this front does not exist. There were literally zero instances in which he successfully brought Democratic and Republican leaders together and negotiated a major legislative breakthrough. Indeed, toward the end of his first term, Trump largely gave up on even trying to make deals with Congress. The Washington Post reported in August 2020, “The president who pitched himself to voters as the consummate negotiator and ultimate dealmaker has repeatedly found his strategies flummoxed by the complexities and pressures of Washington lawmaking.” This came on the heels of the Post’s Jackson Diehl explaining, in reference to Trump: “He’s not up to serious negotiation. He can’t be expected to seriously weigh costs and benefits, or make complex trade-offs. He’s good at bluster, hype and showy gestures, but little else. In short, he may be the worst presidential deal maker in modern history.” With this in mind, as Trump’s lawyers tell the Supreme Court that the president-elect “alone possesses the consummate deal-making expertise … to negotiate a resolution to save” TikTok, I have a follow-up question: Why in the world would anyone believe this, given his record of failed negotiations?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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