[WASHINGTON] US President Donald Trump said on Sunday (Sep 21) 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 United States 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.
Under the expected deal, TikTok’s US assets would be majority-owned by American investors and operated in the United States by a board of directors with national security and cybersecurity credentials, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a White House official.
ByteDance’s current shareholders include Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic, and KKR. ByteDance would hold less than 20 per cent of the stock of a joint venture controlling TikTok’s US operations, the official added.
Trump praised the group in an interview with Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing” programme, calling them prominent people and “American patriots”.
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“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, 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.
Any investment in TikTok US would come through Fox, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The Murdochs would not invest as individuals, nor would News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, these sources said.
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Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are known for their conservative views and their news outlets attract right-leaning audiences, but they have occasionally drawn Trump’s ire.
Trump sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for defamation over a July report that said Trump signed a 2003 birthday greeting for late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that included a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to shared secrets. The newspaper has defended its reporting and vowed to fight the lawsuit.
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. Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has declined to enforce a 2024 US law enacted during the Biden administration requiring TikTok’s divestiture by January 2025 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 per cent stake in Intel Corp and allowing AI chip giant Nvidia to sell its H20 chips to China in exchange for receiving 15 per cent of those sales.
Trump has defended those moves as benefiting US interests. Critics, including some business leaders and Republican lawmakers, have called the interventions a stark departure from the norms of American capitalism and said that they risk hurting the competitiveness of the US economy. REUTERS
