President Donald Trump said Microsoft was in discussion to acquire Tiktok and that he would like to see an “auction war” on the sale of social media application.
Journalists asked if the American technology giant was preparing an offer, Trump replied: “I would say yes” – before adding that there was “great interest in Tiktok” of several companies.
Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have been trying for years to force the Chinese mother company of Tiktok, Bytedance, to sell its American operations on national security grounds.
This occurs when Trump signed a decree last week to reverse a ban on Biden on Tiktok which briefly put the offline application for its 170 million users in the United States.
Despite Tiktok’s granting a 75 -day suspended ban, Trump was the first president to start putting pressure on Bytedance to sell his application.
In August 2020, Bytedance approached Microsoft as a possible buyer – something that the director general of the American company later described as “the strangest thing”.
Later, Tiktok chose his oracle rival as a potential partner – although this agreement has never had too.
Trump previously said that he was in discussion with several parties on the purchase of Tiktok and expects to make a decision on the future of the application in the next 30 days.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that the company had “nothing to share at the moment”. The BBC also contacted Tiktok to comment.
Earlier Monday, the American president spoke to a rally of republican politicians in Florida and had spoken of the proposed sale of Tiktok.
“We will see what’s going on. We are going to have a lot of people to subject it,” he said.
“If we can save all that voice and all jobs, and China will not be involved, we do not want China to be involved, but we will see what is happening,” he added.
The previous names linked to the purchase of Tiktok include billionaire Frank McCourt and the Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary – a famous investor on Shark Tank, the American version of Dragon’s Den.
The largest youtuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson – alias MRBEAST – also said he was in the running after a certain number of investors contacted him following a previous tweet reporting his interest.
