TIKTOK TIME: Trump says he’s ‘open’ to Elon Musk buying TikTok as he confirms $500B Stargate investment in first White House presser

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has said he’s open to the possibility of Elon Musk purchasing TikTok.  Trump, who signed an executive order delaying the federal ban of TikTok for 75 days just hours into his second term, called the popular video-sharing platform “worthless without a permit” from the United States.

While taking questions after announcing the $500 billion AI infrastructure project Stargate on Tuesday, Trump was asked if he’d be open to letting Musk buy TikTok.  “I would be, yeah,” Trump said.  “I met with owners of TikTok, the big owners, it’s worthless if it doesn’t get a permit,” Trump continued.

“It’s not like you can take the US. The whole thing is worthless. With a permit it’s worth like a trillion dollars.  “So, what I’m thinking saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States of America and we’ll give you the a permit and they’ll have a great partner, the United States.”  Musk famously bought X, formerly Twitter, in 2022 for about $44 billion.

But Trump also said he’s open for Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, to purchase TikTok.  “I would like Larry to buy it,” Trump told reporters.  “Let’s negotiate in front of the media, Larry,” he quipped.  Ellison was on hand for the Stargate announcement, along with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Sam Altman of OpenAI.

The trio of executives are expected to funnel about $500 billion into the Stargate project over the next four years.  “What we want to do is we want to keep it in this country,” Trump said of building the artificial intelligence infrastructure.  “China is a competitor, others are competitors. We want to be in this country, and we’re making it available.”  The Stargate announcement comes just days after TikTok’s China-based parent ByteDance failed to find a buyer by the given January 19 deadline.  As a result, the uber-popular app went dark for nearly a day.

The app came back online just hours later with a message from TikTok thanking Trump.  “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive,” the company said.  “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”

Trump had even invited TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew to attend his inauguration on Monday.  Upon his return to the White House, Trump quickly signed an executive order to keep the app up and running for 75 days while a buyer is found.  “The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The President argued that the US should own 50 per cent of the wildly popular app, after his inauguration.  “If I do the deal for the United States, then I think we should get half,” Trump said on Monday.  “In other words wait, I think the US should be entitled to get half of TikTok.  “And congratulations, TikTok has a good partner, and that would be worth, you know, could be $500 billion or something.”