'You owe me big': Trump demands payback from young Americans

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media as he arrives at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 5, 2025. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz

President Donald Trump took to TikTok Monday morning to send a message to young Americans who use the social media platform that they "owe" him for allowing the platform to continue operating in the United States, Newsweekreports.

"To all of those young people of TikTok, I saved TikTok, so you owe me big," Trump said in the video posted to his own account.
"And now you're looking at me in the Oval Office, and someday one of you are going to be sitting right at this desk and you're going to be doing a great job."

A bipartisan mandate passed by Congress during former President Joe Biden's term required TikTok’s China-based parent, ByteDance, to divest its American assets to avoid a nationwide ban.

TikTok, whose future in the U.S. has been up for debate thanks to national security concerns over data privacy and foreign influence, has an estimated 170 million users in the U.S. — and a massive percentage of that audience are young people.

The Trump administration’s latest agreement concluded a multi-year standoff over the Chinese-owned app’s operations and data safeguards in the United States.

In September, Trump said that conservative media moguls Lachlan Murdoch and his father Rupert were expected to join a U.S.-based investor group that would assume control of TikTok’s U.S. operations. He also named tech moguls Larry Ellison and Michael Dell as likely partners in the deal.

And just last week, Trump signed an executive order approving a U.S. group of buyers for a deal valued at around $14 billion, according to Business Insider, despite the fact that analysts had previously estimated that TikTok was worth significantly more.

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