Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch will probably be involved in the effort to buy TikTok in the US, Donald Trump said in an interview on Sunday.
The president was asked about the status of the sale of the app during an interview with Peter Doocy on The Sunday Briefing on Fox News. Trump administration officials have signaled that a deal for the Chinese-owned social media platform was imminent, though there has been some confusion about the status of the agreement.
Trump said moguls Larry Ellison and Michael Dell were involved in the deal before adding: “I hate to tell you this – a man named Lachlan is involved. You know who Lachlan is? That’s a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch.
“Rupert is probably gonna be in the group, I think they’re gonna be in the group, a couple of others. Really great people. Very prominent people. And they’re also American patriots, they love this country, so I think they’re gonna do a really good job.”
Such a deal would involve Fox corporation being among the group of investors in TikTok, CNN reported on Sunday, not Rupert and Lachlan as individual investors.
Representatives for Fox – which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and whose chief executive officer is Lachlan Murdoch – did not immediately return a request for comment. Trump’s comments came after he subjected Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to a lawsuit in connection with the outlet’s publication of allegations that the president composed a crude poem and doodle as part of a book compiled for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.
Congress passed a law in 2024 banning TikTok, owned for now by the China-based company ByteDance, unless it was sold to a US company, citing national security and privacy concerns. The Trump administration has thwarted that law, extending the deadline for a transfer several times. The app has about 170 million users in the US, and Trump on Sunday credited it with helping him win a second presidency in 2024.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Saturday that six Americans will sit on the company’s seven-seat board – and that data and privacy would be controlled by Oracle, Ellison’s company. The US would also control the app’s data and algorithm in America, according to Leavitt.
“This deal does put America first,” Leavitt said on Saturday, invoking one of Trump’s preferred political slogans. “And let me just be very clear. This deal means that TikTok will be majority-owned by Americans in the United States.”
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