In other words: “I hate TikTok and China, but young people hate me, and maybe I can shave off a quarter of a percent in a tight race if I give them TikTok”
Related: anyone been on TikTok lately? I know misinformation is all over social media in general, but holy fuck is it bad on TikTok. Even after using custom filters to try and avoid election stuff altogether, it seems like every other post is some ridiculous MAGA BS without sources making some outrageous claim about Democrats.
Case in point: according to multiple posts I saw earlier today, both Kamala and Tim Walz have dropped out of the race.
Facebook was like that for ages, posts about the try that in a small town guy outselling Taylor swift, woke celebrities begging to work with kid rock but bring denied, Disney announcing they're firing all their diversity hires... it's like they're living in a totally different reality.
Of course he does - his mental capacity does not allow him to conceptualize the future or plan for it, or to remember the past, so he just says whatever he considers to be most advantageous to him at that very moment...
He can’t even save his own social media company. He’s lost $5 billion in less than a month. Even for a guy who bankrupted multiple casinos, that’s an achievement.
And tax write-off sink holes, as he loves to over-value for loans and then under value for tax breaks (ex. - what he did in NY and is currently appealing the judgement against him). And losses would lower that tax burden even further.
Oh no, the guy who will say anything to get elected is saying something different than he used to. How dare he, the scoundrel.
I guess I'm more interested in who the target demo for this piece is. Like everyone who's going to care already has an opinion about him (for good or ill) is this a last straw effort to wear down his base? They live in an entirely different reality, if felony indictments, sex scandals, and the rest haven't been enough him suddenly supporting a popular and controversial app actually might help him with the base.
Is it red meat for the outrage masochists among Trump's opposition? If so, why not go for the juicer Russian psyop story that broke a few days ago about former trump staffers and alt right podcasters being paid by the kremlin to sow misinformation? That's much more outrageous if you're looking to get your rocks off about what Trump has done this time.
I am looking forward to the day the only thing people write about Trump is that he's still alive in Argentina or a look at how the Trump era changed us all.
It demotivates potential Democratic voters by reminding them that their party did the thing everyone was clowning on Trump for trying to do.
For all his faults, Trump is better at reading the room than the democrats. When there's an issue he doesn't know shit about (this is most things), he'll just say what the people in front of him want to hear, whereas the democrats have no problem saying and doing things that are incredibly unpopular among their base.
I am looking forward to the day the only thing people write about Trump is that he’s still alive in Argentina
The most on brand would be him flying a plane full of gold bullion to Cuba to avoid going to prison.
Banning it was his administration's idea. Not saying I'm for or against banning TikTok, I don't really have any skin in the game because I don't even use the service so it makes no difference to me, but ffs hold this dude accountable for one fucking thing for a change. Why do so many people let him get away with saying whatever convenient lie that pops into his mind?
I'd start by assuming that he's either being paid somehow for suddenly supporting TikTok or if there's something else in it for him.
With trump, usually "it's grift" is the likely explanation for many things.
Are there single-issue tiktok voters? Probably not. But democrats doing a thing that we all agreed was dumb under Trump does contribute to the sense that the democrats do not represent them, which decreases voter turnout.
Similar to Biden escalating the trade war against China; there's probably not "buy a chinese EV" single-issue voters, but making EVs unaffordable to the vast majority of Americans decreases voter turnout among people who didn't want a trade war with China.
Every time the democrats try to out-flank the republicans from the right, they're effectively campaigning for the republicans.