US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was open to billionaire Elon Musk or Oracle Corp chairman Larry Ellison purchasing social video app TikTok as part of a joint venture with the US government.
“I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said at an event alongside Ellison at the White House on Tuesday. “So what I’m thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States of America, half, and we’ll give you the permit, and they’ll have a great partner,” Bloomberg reports.
The short video app used by 170 million Americans was taken offline temporarily for users shortly before a law that said it must be sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance on national security grounds, or be banned, took effect on Sunday.
Bloomberg News reported last week that Chinese officials were in preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok’s operations in the United States to Musk, though the company has denied that.
Trump on Monday signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after US officials warned that under Chinese parent company ByteDance, there was a risk of Americans’ data being misused. TikTok remained unavailable to download on Apple and Android devices in the US on Tuesday afternoon.