'Nonexistent presidential privilege': Conservative details way Trump 'simply ignored the law'

President Donald Trump was once a scathing critic of TikTok, but that was before supporters used the platform to promote his 2024 campaign. And during his second presidency, Trump has delayed a TikTok ban from going into effect in the United States.

Under the ban — which was passed along bipartisan lines in Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden — TikTok's U.S. operations must either be divested of Mainland China ownership or go dark in the U.S.

In an article published by the conservative National Review on July 2, Jim Geraghty is highly critical of Trump's approach to TikTok — arguing that he is obligated to adhere to a federal law even if he disagrees with it.

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"On the menu today: We have another bout of presidential lawbreaking — calm down, Alvin Bragg, this isn’t in your jurisdiction," Geraghty argues. "President Trump continues to ignore the ban on TikTok, and is implausibly claiming that a buyer for the remarkably popular Chinese propaganda app is just around the corner. Elsewhere, the (Trump) Administration announces, with little explanation, that it's just not going to spend nearly $8 billion in appropriated Department of Education funds, including money that’s supposed to help immigrant children learn English. You know, that doesn't quite align with the executive order declaring English the official language of the United States."

Geraghty emphasizes that the TikTok ban was passed with strong bipartisan support in 2024. Democrats still controlled the White House and the U.S. Senate that year, but Republicans had a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). Trump, he laments, "has simply ignored the law" by using "nonexistent presidential privilege."

"Large bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate passed a law requiring that TikTok be sold or banned," the National Review conservative explains. "President Biden signed it into law, and the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional. TikTok was scheduled to be banned in the U.S. on January 19, 2025, unless its parent company, ByteDance, divested its U.S. operations. This deadline was set by that law passed in 2024. TikTok is still owned by ByteDance."

Geraghty continues, "As our Jimmy Quinn laid out in detail more than two years ago, 'ByteDance is a key player in the Chinese Communist Party's military-industrial-surveillance system'…. ByteDance is subject to all the influence, guidance and de facto control to which the Chinese Communist Party now subjects all PRC technology companies.' This is not a close call, this is not a grey area, this is not debatable, and there is no wiggle room. Under the law, TikTok is supposed to be banned right now."

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Jim Geraghty's full article for The National Review is available at this link.