The News
The Biden campaign is slowly building up its presence on TikTok after making a splashy entrance on Super Bowl Sunday. But while Donald Trump is also targeting younger voters in this soon-to-be general election matchup, don’t expect him to hop on the bandwagon anytime soon.
One of Trump’s advisors noted that it would be a big shift for the former president to join TikTok — he tried to ban it back in 2020, arguing that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, made it a national security threat. A person close to the campaign, meanwhile, said they “doubt” that Trump would ever take the plunge.
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Shelby’s view
Even as 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds reported using the platform in 2023, per Pew Research, Republican politicians don’t seem to feel much pressure to create an account.
Suspicion of TikTok has become fairly widespread among conservative lawmakers backing Trump and joining it would likely spark a backlash among some of his staunch allies. In February, a group of Republican lawmakers — including figures like Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. and Byron Donalds, R-Fla., who have been floated as potential Trump vice presidential picks — sent a letter to Biden urging him to “delete your account” because the platform “endangers national security.”
“If you weigh the possible positive impact on young voters versus the certain negative impact on our base, it’s a wash at best,” a second person close to the campaign told Semafor.
Democrats have also been wary of TikTok, which the Biden administration banned on federal government devices. But its increasing ubiquity among younger voters made it harder and harder to ignore, especially after the Israel-Gaza war broke out and it became a hub for progressive discontent with the White House.
It’s unclear how big of an impact Biden will have on the platform with this voter base. The “Biden-Harris HQ” currently has a little over 200,000 followers and roughly 1.9 million likes across all of its content — notable, but not yet spectacular numbers by TikTok standards. In one video, they poke fun at Republican megadonor Betsy DeVos with a viral image of a sad-looking hamster and depressing violin music. In another, Vice President Kamala Harris talks about the recent Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding IVF. A third clip posted by the account highlights a cookout Biden attended in North Carolina.
Team Trump has relied on different measures to reach younger voters outside traditional media as some polls show them making gains: The former president has attended sporting events, done interviews with shows like the Full Send Podcast, and highlighted support from rappers.
Room for Disagreement
Vivek Ramaswamy joined TikTok after previously decrying the app, saying in a debate that Republicans need to be “reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.” Ramaswamy told NBC News just after making an account that he’s “always open to new arguments” — while adding that it still “doesn’t negate the concerns” he has about TikTok. He currently has over 400,000 followers, about doubling the Biden campaign’s early total.
Notable
Team Biden has tapped an “army of influencers” to spread the president’s record, Axios reported back in April. “Hundreds of unpaid, independent content creators have been given access to Biden’s White House,” the article noted.