The president and his advisors say TikTok is a national security threat. But maybe the ban is really about Trump’s hurt feelings over his ruined rally in Tulsa.
President Trump says TikTok is kaput in America.
The president has vowed to ban the app as soon as today. He and other officials have cited national security concerns for doing this, publicly expressing worry that the Chinese-owned company will share user data with the Chinese government.
But what if there’s another reason why Trump wants to turn off TikTok, something driven not by high-minded policy but by something as simple as hurt feelings.
A theory explaining all this has quietly and persistently circulated among TikTokers since the ban was first discussed a few weeks ago: What if this has nothing to do with China, nothing to do with national security? What if this does have everything to do with Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June? The event was supposed to mark a return to the campaign assemblies that the president covets, a comeback show of force with nearly 20,000 people in attendance after months of Covid 19 lockdown. And it was totally ruined for him by TikTokers and other young people online who coordinated a campaign to register for tickets to the event and never show up. So, what if the ban on TikTok is retaliation for that?
It’s a theory. And surely no one other than Trump and perhaps a few other White House denizens understand the president’s true motivations for the ban. But as a hypothesis, it makes sense and has a compelling timeline.
“It’s petty. I think his people have told him enough that ‘Yeah, it did have an effect on your Tulsa rally,’” says Mary Jo Laupp, 51, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, who was an unlikely chief organizer of the movement on TikTok against Trump’s rally. “I think that these Gen Zers made him look bad.”
Or as Trevor Slack, a 26-year-old in Los Angeles who reserved six tickets to the event and did not attend, puts it: “Seems like he got pretty butt-hurt.”
What exactly happened? In June, Trump announced he wanted to have a rally in Tulsa on June 19, a day celebrated as a holiday commemorating the end of slavery.
