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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Former President Donald Trump announced on Saturday night that he has joined TikTok amid news that he has lost $314 million in his Truth Social share value.
Trump posted a launch video on a verified account, @realDonaldTrump, showing him waving to fans at the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in Newark, New Jersey, that he attended on Saturday.
"The president is now on TikTok," UFC President Dana White announced in the 13-second clip.
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"It's my honor," Trump responds.
The clip had amassed more than 2.7 million views in around four hours, and more than half a million likes.
Trump's move to join TikTok came after the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), which operates the social media platform Truth Social, plunged on Friday after the former president, the company's majority shareholder, became the first commander-in-chief to be convicted of felony crimes on Thursday.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment via email.
A New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who alleged the pair had a sexual encounter.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, joining TikTok just a few months after President Joe Biden's campaign is a sign that both campaigns view TikTok as a powerful messaging platform to reach voters ahead of November's election despite the controversy surround the popular video-sharing platform.
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President Joe Biden signed a law in April that requires its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. to sell TikTok within a year or face a ban in the U.S.
Those trying to ban TikTok say its ownership by ByteDance gives Beijing a dangerous amount of influence over what Americans see and possibly gives it access to U.S. user data. ByteDance has consistently emphasized that it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.
Trump himself tried to to ban TikTok through an executive order when he was in office over national security concerns, but has said this year that he opposes a TikTok ban.
Despite still believing that TikTok poses a national security risk, Trump says barring access to it would help Facebook, a platform he has continually criticized since his 2020 election loss to Biden.
"Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in April.
"He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party."
Update 6/2/24, 4 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
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