White House TikTok garners 1.3 million views in 24 hours

By Morgan Sweeney
The Center Square

Within 24 hours of its debut, the first video posted to the new White House TikTok account has racked up more than 1.3 million views.

The White House announced the creation of its TikTok account Tuesday evening, posting a video montage of President Donald Trump engaging with supporters, addressing crowds and featuring audio from a previous speech.

“Every day, I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the people all across this nation. I am your voice!” Trump’s voice booms.

The video is captioned, “America we are BACK. What’s up TikTok?”

The president himself has not yet commented on the creation of the account, but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that the administration views the social media platform as another way of keeping Americans informed of the president’s accomplishments.

“The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Known for personally posting directly to social media, Trump has his own TikTok account that was used to spread his message during his latest presidential campaign.

“We’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before,” Leavitt said.

The account now features eight videos including footage of Trump, Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance verbally skewering detractors, the president’s notorious YMCA dance and a mishmash of iconic movie moments celebrating the first 200 days of his second term.

The account’s launch comes approximately one month before the thrice-extended deadline for the Chinese-owned social media company to sell to an American buyer.

Trump signed an executive order in 2020 banning the social media platform in the U.S. due to concerns that the Chinese Communist Party was using it to access American data and influence American youth. A federal judge struck down the order, and President Joe Biden later issued an executive order enabling the app’s survival. But suspicions over the app persisted and culminated in Congress passing a bill in the spring of 2024 containing the same directive as Trump’s original executive order: ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, must sell the company or the app will be banned in the U.S.

Lawsuits sprung up challenging the bill, and the Republican president has now postponed the deadline for the app’s sale three times by executive order – for 75 days, another 75 days and an additional 90 days – putting the current deadline at Sept. 17, 2025.

The White House did not respond directly to a question from The Center Square on whether Americans could take its creation of a TikTok account as a sign that ByteDance has found a buyer.