TikTok's age of chaos
“It was all a game. It was like a competition: What’s a creative way to suck up to Trump?”
Full story: Inside TikTok’s frantic scramble to halt U.S. ban
I covered the bitter final negotiations between TikTok and the Biden White House:
TikTok’s consultants and political allies called and sent messages to Democratic staffers and “anyone in the White House with a pulse,” one of the people said. But Biden officials questioned the propriety of going further to undercut the law, and some remained suspicious of the app’s public appeals to Trump for aid. ...
“You have two sides who just hated each other and fundamentally didn’t trust each other,” another person said.
One person familiar with the Biden team’s thinking argued the White House’s statement should have sufficed, especially over a holiday weekend. He questioned whether the concerns from TikTok’s providers, including Oracle, were merely theatrical attempts to stay on Trump’s good side.
“It was all a game. It was like a competition: What’s a creative way to suck up to Trump?” the person said. “They created a crisis and then averted it. But there was no crisis.”
