Biden’s TikTok Flip-Flop: President Rushes To Undo Ban He Championed As Backlash Grows

We're still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the TikTok ban case, which is expected to come today or tomorrow. But things are getting increasingly silly. The Biden administration, which actively pushed for the ban and eagerly signed it into law, is now making a last-ditch effort to... keep the app operating, even as the Supreme Court may side with [checks notes] the administration's own Solicitor General who last week told the court that the law needed to go into effect.

This is according to NBC reporters who have the scoop:

President Joe Biden's administration is considering ways to keep TikTok available in the United States if a ban that's scheduled to go into effect Sunday proceeds, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Americans shouldn't expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday," an administration official said, adding that officials are exploring options" for how to implement the law so TikTok does not go dark Sunday.

That story comes out a few hours after a similar report detailing how President-elect Donald Trump's team has their own plans to save TikTok."

President-elect Donald Trump is considering an executive order once in office that would suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban-or-sale law for 60 to 90 days, buying the administration time to negotiate a sale or alternative solution - a legally questionable effort to win a brief reprieve for the Chinese-owned app now scheduled to be banned on Sunday nationwide.

Trump has been mulling ways to save the day for the wildly popular video app, talking through unconventional dealmaking and legal maneuvers such as an executive order that would unravel the law passed by Congress last year with bipartisan support, according to two people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Trump has expressed a keen interest in being seen as rescuing a platform on which he's been told he's widely admired...

To recap this utterly stupid situation, let's review the key facts here. Donald Trump was the first President who tried to ban TikTok during his last administration, only to have that attempt rejected by the courts as unconstitutional.

Subsequently, last year, the Biden administration joined forces with a large bipartisan majority to try a more legal" way of banning the app, and they all celebrated when they bundled the TikTok ban with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Trump flipped his position after getting a big donation from a billionaire friend who happens to own a huge chunk of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance. And, as noted, Trump filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, essentially asking the court to delay enforcement so that he, in his view, the super genius social media deal maker (insert sarcasm font), could swoop in and make a deal to save the app.

So, now both of these Presidents, who have both tried to ban TikTok, are suddenly both claiming they want to save TikTok just as the Supreme Court seems poised to likely allow the ban to go through... and meanwhile the kids on TikTok start embracing even crazier apps from China.

All day yesterday, you could hear various politicians in DC seemingly freak out as they watched kids eagerly embrace other Chinese apps while mocking the TikTok ban. And now it appears that the two Presidents, both of whom insisted on banning the app, are (way too late) realizing just how disconnected from kids this makes them look.

All of this continues to make the political class look like a bunch of absolute dipshits who have no clue what they're doing.