Last week, US president Joe Biden said he would sign legislation that gives China's ByteDance around six months to divest TikTok.
ADVERTISEMENTFormer US president Donald Trump has reversed his stance on social media platform TikTok and argued that a ban would strengthen Meta’s Facebook, branding it an "enemy of the people".
TikTok is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance and regulators fear that its ownership means it could be forced by China’s government to share private user data.
"Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people," Trump, who is set to become the Republican nominee in November’s presidential election, said in an interview on Monday on CNBC’s 'Squawk Box' show.
In 2020, the Trump administration tried to remove TikTok from app stores in the US as it had similar concerns over user data.
Trump gave ByteDance an official order to sell its stake or face restrictions, which in the end did not happen.
Bill to ban TikTok in the US
US lawmakers have proposed separate pieces of legislation proposing a ban or divestiture of TikTok as the November presidential election nears.
Last week, President Joe Biden said he would sign legislation that gives China's ByteDance around six months to divest TikTok if it reached his desk after a committee on Thursday unanimously approved a TikTok crackdown bill.
The US House of Representatives plans to vote on the measure next week.
"If China wants anything from [TikTok], they will give it, so that’s a national security risk [that] goes up," Trump said in the CNBC interview.
"But when I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others - but mostly Facebook - will be a big beneficiary, and I think Facebook has been very busy," he said.
"I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections," Trump added.
