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Journalists and commentators responded to former President Trump’s surprise decision to create a TikTok account, quickly eclipsing President Biden’s presence on the platform.
“Donald Trump joining TikTok is going to be huge, you watch,” former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage posted to X on Sunday. “Gen Z are crying out for leadership.”
As of Monday afternoon, Trump had over 4 million followers after posting his first video Saturday night. Biden, who created an account four months prior, had roughly 347,000 followers.
TRUMP JOINS TIKTOK, THE APP HE ONCE TRIED TO BAN AS PRESIDENT
Journalists and commentators responded to former President Trump’s surprise decision to create a TikTok account, which quickly eclipsed President Biden’s follower count. (Getty Images)
“Trump has (unsurprisingly) joined tiktok,” ex-social media producer for Sen. John Fetterman’s campaign, Annie Wu, wrote. “In his first day he amassed 3.3M followers and received 3.2M likes on his first video[.]”
“Hopefully the numbers won’t continue to be so bad for Biden vs Trump on tiktok,” she wrote in another post. “Or else it will be like a very public and bad poll, a massive ratio, everyday for all to see,” Wu continued. “To be clear, this likely won’t impact anything actually electoral — mainly it would just be embarrassing[.]”
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Trump’s decision to bring his campaign to TikTok comes despite his attempts to ban the app as president.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s first post was a launch video on Saturday night on a verified account — @realDonaldTrump — showing him waving to fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight in Newark, New Jersey, that he attended a few hours earlier.
The move appears to be an effort to connect with younger voters who frequent the app, as Trump faces off with Biden in a 2024 election rematch. The main super PAC supporting Trump, MAGA Inc., joined TikTok a few weeks ago. The site has roughly 170 million users in the U.S.
The app appears to be friendly ground for the former president, with roughly twice as many pro-Trump posts compared to pro-Biden posts on the site, according to recent reports from The New York Times and Puck, which cited internal analysis from TikTok.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Story tips can be sent to jeffrey.clark@fox.com.
