Two months after former President Donald Trump reversed course and said that he opposed a TikTok ban, a group funded nearly exclusively by billionaire TikTok investor Jeff Yass, who is generally known as a Never Trumper, donated to an organization running a multi-million dollar pro-Trump campaign in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.
Trump’s flip-flop on the TikTok issue earlier this year was a striking departure from his position as president. In August 2020, Trump issued an executive order “addressing the threat posed by TikTok” that called for the U.S. to “take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security.” The order would have required TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app within 45 days, but it was blocked by federal judges later that year.
On March 7, Trump posted to Truth Social that he no longer supported banning TikTok. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business," Trump wrote.
Trump’s Truth Social post came days after he met on March 1 at Mar-a-Lago with hedge fund billionaire Jeff Yass, according to reports. Yass, whose Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania-based Susquehanna International Group holds a 15% stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, is a major conservative political donor, but he has long been a Trump critic and has never donated to the former president. Yass’ personal stake in ByteDance is 7%, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Many of Trump’s critics have suggested that his TikTok flip-flop was meant to win support from Yass, but Yass has still not endorsed Trump and he has pushed back against reports that he was planning to donate to the campaign.
