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President Donald Trump claimed that Gen-Z TikTok users "owe me big" in his first post on the social media platform since a proposed sale to a group of American investors kept it available to American users.
“To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big,” Trump said on Monday (October 6). “Now, you’re looking at me in the Oval Office, and someday one of you are gonna be sitting right at this desk, and you’re gonna be doing a great job also.”
Vice President JD Vance also shared a post announcing the relaunch of his account amid the proposed deal, which he also credited to Trump.
“Glad to be back on TikTok thanks to President Trump!” Vance said in his own post shared on Monday. “Follow along here for more updates from the White House, and maybe even some sombrero memes.”
Trump signed an executive order to facilitate a deal to potentially transfer ownership of the popular social media application TikTok to Americans on September 25.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” he said at the time via NBC News. “I have great respect for President Xi, and I very much appreciate that he approved the deal, because to get it done properly, we really needed the support of China and the approval of China.”
It's not clear who the parties involved with the deal are, however, Trump confirmed that Oracle and its co-founder Larry Ellison will play a "big" role moving forward, while entrepreneur Michael Dell and media mogul Rupert Murdoch would also have involvement.
The structure of the reported deal would adhere to a bipartisan law passed in 2024 calling for the social media application to be banned if it wasn't sold to American owners in 2025. The app had previously shut down temporarily in January, one day prior to Trump's inauguration, and went back online after the president promised not to enforce penalties against it in the law and would seek to make a deal with China to sell the platform.
Trump had extended the deadline several times in 2025 prior to a deal on a sale being reached.