How you claim you forcing China to sell when they still retain ownership?
He's giving 20% of the company to one of his donors though.
And Trump taking a $5 billion mafia cut to start his "patriot" school curriculum.
This is the most openly corrupt presidency ever.
He's giving 20% of the company to one of his donors though.
And Trump taking a $5 billion mafia cut to start his "patriot" school curriculum.
1. Although the Chinese government objected to an outright sale of TikTok and its valuable algorithm, the deal supposedly gives American companies and investors 53 percent of the equity in the new company—what the administration can pitch as “American control.” The New York Times reports, however, that ByteDance will hold an 80 percent stake in the new company. It’s only when you count the investors like Sequoia Capital and Coatue Management that already had ByteDance stakes that it looks like majority U.S. ownership. At a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Saturday, Trump said, “It’ll be a brand-new company. It will have nothing to do with any outside land, any outside country. It will have nothing to do with China.” Instead, it appears TikTok Global will very much still be a Chinese company.
2. Oracle beat out Microsoft for ByteDance’s favor as it scrambled to put together the least disruptive deal that would persuade Trump to sign off. Microsoft, which already runs one social network and has plenty of experience with consumer-facing products, seemed like the obvious buyer, assuming TikTok would sell. Since it wouldn’t, enterprise-focused Oracle offered ByteDance something else tantalizing: a Trump connection. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is a major Trump supporter, has hosted high-dollar campaign fundraisers, and reportedly helped put the whole hydroxychloroquine idea in the president’s head. Oracle CEO Safra Catz and executive vice president Ken Glueck have also donated to Trump and served on the administration’s transition team after 2016.* Since then, the administration has repeatedly gone to bat for Oracle’s interests, as my colleague Aaron Mak recently recounted.
The TikTok Deal Stinks3. After he threatened to ban TikTok, Trump said that a deal should include a “very substantial” finder’s fee for the U.S. Treasury. That would be unusual for any negotiation between two private companies, but now it might be worse. On Saturday, Trump said TikTok would “be making about a $5 billion contribution towards education,” which would go into a fund to teach “the real history, not the fake history” of the United States. The president has lately been attacking the 1619 Project, the New York Times Magazine package and education curriculum about the role of slavery in America’s founding—a baffling, nakedly political concern of Trump’s that has nothing to do with tech policy or trade.
This is the most openly corrupt presidency ever.