TikTok ban delayed again, one day before time runs out

News of the delay arrived hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that a consortium of venture capitalists run by America’s richest and most powerful billionaires was entering final talks with ByteDance to seize control of the app. Oracle, owned by Larry Ellison, occasionally the world’s richest man and father of David Ellison, whose company Skydance recently merged with Paramount, leads an investor group that includes the private equity firm Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, owned by Trump super donor, Joe Rogan guest, and culture warrior Marc Andreessen. The investors would own 80% of the company, with Oracle keeping all that sweet, sweet user data at its facilities in Texas.

However, there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of the deal, considering how long the most popular and influential social media app has been on the auction block. On June 29, when he delayed the ban for a third time, Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that he had a “buyer for TikTok” and that he’d “tell you about it in two weeks.” He did no such thing. Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to discuss the deal. If he does, we’re absolutely, 100 percent certain that we’ll hear about it in two weeks.