Lauren Tomlinson: Trump Is ‘Threading a Thin Line’ on TikTok Ban

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BLITZER: “Lauren Tomlinson is with us as well. Lauren, I want to play something for you and our viewers that Trump said about TikTok earlier this month. Listen and watch this.”
[Clip starts]
Trump: “We‘ll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that.”
[Clip ends]
BLITZER: “So that was this reversal It seems to be about where he stands on TikTok. Trump thinks TikTok was very helpful to him in winning the election. What‘s your reaction to that?”
TOMLINSON: “I think Donald Trump is threading a thin line that while TikTok is a national security issue and you know, his incoming, presumably secretary of state Marco Rubio is firmly in the camp that TikTok needs to be banned. Kellyanne Conway showed him some very convincing polling during the campaign that showed that TikTok was super popular among American youth. It‘s where they get a lot of their news, and it also is where it kind of plays into this theme that the voters and who Donald Trump is speaking to, and how he built this unique coalition to win the election, is not necessarily listening to legacy media. They‘re on social media, they‘re on TikTok, they‘re on YouTube. They‘re all of these other platforms getting their information. And so he wants to maintain that First Amendment right of people being able to be their own media as Elon Musk has been saying on X lately. However, I think that when he goes into take a look at this, he‘s going to revert back to the same place where all of us are saying that TikTok is still the same national security issue, that it has been. This to me, says that this is a way to keep his campaign promise by speaking up in defense of TikTok now, and then once there‘s a review, he can revert back to his original position of TikTok being bad for the country.”