Today's Edition
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that media mogul Lachlan Murdoch and business leaders Larry Ellison and Michael Dell would be involved as US investors in a proposed deal to keep TikTok operating in the United States.
Trump has said that the US and China have made progress on a deal requiring TikTok's American assets to be transferred to US owners from China's ByteDance.
The proposed investors would give Trump allies in corporate America influence over a widely popular social media app, which counts 170 million US users and helps shape public discourse on politics and culture.
Trump praised the group in an interview with Fox News' "The Sunday Briefing" program, calling them prominent people and "American patriots."
"I think they're going to do a really good job," Trump said, crediting TikTok with helping build his support among young voters in the 2024 presidential election.
Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp, recently cemented long-term control of his family's media empire that includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal after settling a years-long legal battle with his siblings.
The family patriarch, 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch, may also be involved in the deal, Trump said.
Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle and a major Republican donor, has long been linked to a potential TikTok deal. Dell is the CEO of Dell Technologies.
The Trump administration has declined to enforce a US law enacted during the Biden administration requiring TikTok's divestiture over fears its US user data could be accessed by the Chinese government. Trump has included negotiations over the app as part of wide-ranging economic talks with China.
The Trump administration has made a series of unusual interventions in US business, including taking a 10% stake in Intel Corp and allowing AI chip giant Nvidia to sell its H20 chips to China in exchange for receiving 15% of those sales.
Trump has defended those moves as benefiting US interests.
