Trump says he considers Facebook ‘an enemy of the people’

(The Hill) — Former President Trump on Monday said he views Facebook as “an enemy of the people” as he reiterated his opposition to a ban on TikTok.

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users,” Trump said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures to the audience after speaking during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, at the National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md., Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

“There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is, without TikTok you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with the media,” Trump added.

CNBC journalists noted Trump previously described TikTok as a national security threat during his first term in the White House.

Trump said he still believes that’s the case, saying the government must protect Americans’ “privacy and data rights.”

“If you look at some of our American companies … they’re not so American,” Trump said. “They deal in which, and if China wants anything from them, they will give it. So that’s a national security risk also,” he said.

“But when I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size, and if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary,” Trump added.

The former president confirmed he recently met with Jeff Yass, a major GOP donor and investor in TikTok. But he said Yass did not bring up TikTok during the conversation.

Trump last Friday voiced skepticism about banning TikTok after lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation that would require the app’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from ownership or face a U.S. ban.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously advanced the legislation Thursday.

When Trump was in office in 2020, he vowed to ban the video-based social media app from operating in the U.S. and issued an order calling on ByteDance to divest from TikTok’s U.S. operations. However, the order was later blocked in court.

Facebook banned Trump in January 2021 in the wake of the Capitol riots, during which hundreds of his supporters attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election results.

The former president spent months spreading false claims about the election on social media in the lead-up to the insurrection.

Meta, which is Facebook’s parent company, reinstated Trump last year.