December 27, 2024
I did not have President elect Donald Trump coming to TikTok’s defense in front of the Supreme Court on my bingo card today – but here we are.
President elect Donald Trump filed what’s called an amicus brief to the Supreme Court this afternoon. That is a brief filed by a third party – who is not part of the case – to give additional arguments that the supreme court may want to consider when making their decision.
In his brief — Trump urged the Supreme Court to issue a stay – or a pause –the TikTok ban. As you know that ban is supposed to take effect on January 19th, one day before Trump takes office on January 20th. President trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture, and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office. …as the incoming chief executive, president trump has a particularly powerful interest in and responsibility for those national-security and foreign-policy questions, and he is the right constitutional actor to resolve the dispute through political means.
In his brief Trump says in the election he received “a powerful electoral mandate from American voters to protect the free-speech rights of all Americans—including the 170 million Americans who use TikTok.”
The brief says trump is a very avid user of social media, who feels like at one point his voice was stifled and that’s why he started his own social media platform. All that experience gives him “…in-depth perspective on the extraordinary government power attempted to be exercised in this case—the power of the federal government to effectively shut down a social-media platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform. President trump is keenly aware of the historic dangers presented by such a precedent.”
Now there are a few key lines and phrases in this brief I want to highlight here… especially in light of this video I posted a few weeks ago answering the question can Trump save TikTok.
The first line I want to highlight in today’s trump amicus brief is — president trump takes no position on the merits of the dispute. And the other phrase is “President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture.”
Now I’m highlighting those two lines for two reasons. One – trump is being clear that he hasn’t made a decision about whether TikTok should stay or go. That’s why he says he takes no position on the merits of the dispute. He’s just arguing that *he* should have a chance to weigh in on whether TikTok is a national security threat or not. He may ultimately decide that yes it is. He just wants to be able to make a choice. And two — while clearly, trump is *now *saying he wants a pause on the ban on TikTok so perhaps he can find a “political” solution, that was not his stance on TikTok when he was in office the first time. In fact is was him specifically and his administration that tried to ban TikTok—multiple times. So language like the phrases I’m point out – give Trump a way out in case he gets into this and decides he does not like what’s happening with TikTok.
Read Trump’s amicus brief in support of TikTok to the Supreme Court here.
