Telsa, SpaceX, and X CEO Elon Musk appears to be like on forward of the inauguration ceremony the place Donald Trump will sworn in because the forty seventh US President within the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Musk attacked the US Company for Worldwide Improvement on February 2, 2025, calling it a “legal group” after Donald Trump moved to freeze the majority of Washington’s overseas help for 3 months. (Photograph by Chip Somodevilla / POOL / AFP)
WASHINGTON, United States — Elon Musk, the world’s richest particular person and a high advisor to US President Donald Trump, stated he has no real interest in buying social media platform TikTok’s operations in the USA, in feedback launched Saturday.
“I’ve not put in a bid for TikTok and I don’t have any plans for what I’d do if I had TikTok,” stated Musk in feedback made by way of video hyperlink at a German discussion board in late January that was launched on the weekend.
TikTok is going through a US legislation that ordered the corporate to interrupt off from its Chinese language proprietor, ByteDance, or in any other case be banned in the USA because of nationwide safety issues relating to the info it gathers on customers.
In considered one of his first acts in workplace, Trump ordered a pause on imposing the legislation that ought to have seen TikTok successfully made unlawful within the nation a day earlier than he took workplace for a second time period.
Quickly after, Trump stated he could be open to Musk — the proprietor of social media platform X, Tesla, and a slew of different firms — shopping for the platform.
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Musk, nonetheless, stated he didn’t want to purchase the corporate.
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“I don’t use TikTok personally, so, you already know, I’m not that accustomed to it,” he stated. “I’m not chomping on the bit to accumulate TikTok.”
Musk purchased social media large Twitter, which he renamed X, for $44 billion in 2022, insisting he was doing so with the intention to safeguard “free speech.”
Since his takeover, rights campaigners warn there was a spike in hate speech and disinformation on the platform.
Musk was considered one of Trump’s important monetary backers in his presidential marketing campaign, and is heading the US president’s budget-slashing initiatives.
His so-called “Division of Authorities Effectivity” has focused a variety of federal authorities companies and regulators, with the obvious intent of shutting them down and firing employees, particularly these not in keeping with Trump’s political agenda.
On Saturday, a US decide issued an emergency order blocking Musk’s authorities reform staff from accessing private and monetary information for hundreds of thousands of People saved on the Treasury Division, courtroom paperwork confirmed.
Within the feedback on the discussion board in Germany, Musk additionally took purpose at Range, Fairness, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are supposed to assist traditionally oppressed and disenfranchised communities.
“DEI is just racism rebranded,” he stated. “I’m towards racism and sexism regardless of who it’s directed towards.”
US officers have been racing to enact Trump’s warfare on DEI throughout the federal paperwork — dismantling coaching initiatives, scrapping grants, and sidelining lots of of employees.
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In Germany, Musk has voiced agency assist for the far-right anti-immigration AfD occasion — a political taboo in a rustic whose Nazi previous stays a delicate topic.