By all appearances, Donald Trump assumed he’d have a deal by now to bring TikTok under U.S. ownership. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet, and so the president keeps issuing executive orders stating that he’s going to ignore federal law for a little while longer. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 90 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership. Trump disclosed the executive order on the Truth Social platform Thursday morning.
By now, the basic contours of this mess are probably familiar. During the president’s first term, the Republican made no effort to hide his opposition to TikTok. In fact, it was just five 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 president said during his 2020 re-election campaign.
Trump, true to form, ended up reversing course, but policymakers stuck to his original position: Last year, Congress approved, and Joe Biden signed, a measure that threatened to ban TikTok, deeming it a national security threat.
On the first day of his second term, Trump delayed implementation of the law — with the Supreme Court’s approval — by 90 days to give federal officials time to complete a transfer of ownership from China to the United States. In April, as the deadline approached, the president did it again, and this week, he did it for the third time.
The headline on the AP’s article noted that Trump is acting without a “clear legal basis,” and it’s a critically important point: The president keeps issuing orders that seem to say, “I’ve decided that I’m not going to enforce federal law in this area for the next few months.”
When a reporter pressed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday as to whether such moves are legal, she said administration officials “strongly believe” that it’s fine. But that was hardly reassuring: Team Trump telling Team Trump that it can do what the president wants to do isn’t much a justification.
As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained this week, “Donald Trump’s refusal to impose a congressionally authorized ban on TikTok is a clear example of his disregard for democracy,” adding that the president’s delays reflect “a very Putin-esque way of doing business.”
What makes these developments unusual is that while congressional Republicans tend to be indifferent in response to Trump’s other abuses, this one is generating at least some pushback.
Asked about the latest delay in implementing federal law, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker told reporters this week, “I’m not overly delighted.” The Mississippi Republican added, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas similarly said, “I’d like to see the law go into effect.” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told Axios, in reference to the White House’s move, “That’s not my favorite thing. I’m fine with him trying to sell it, that’s fine, but I think at a certain point we’ve got to enforce this law.” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NOTUS that he also wants to see the delays come to an end, adding, “Since it’s been extended two or three times already without any repercussions, I just want finality.” These aren’t exactly full-throated condemnations from Capitol Hill, but given that these same GOP senators tend just to smile and nod when Trump thumbs his nose at the rule of law, it’s good to see even mild criticisms of the president’s ongoing refusal to implement a law he used to support. It also leads to an unavoidable follow-up question for these same Republican lawmakers: Trump is allowing a Chinese-owned company to operate illegally in the U.S. because he thinks it helped his 2024 candidacy, so now what are you going to do about it? This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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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