TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will reportedly become the latest tech CEO to visit Mar-a-Lago, hours after the company asked the Supreme Court to block a law that could ban the social media app in the U.S. as early as January.
Chew, the Singapore-born CEO of the massively popular short form video app, planned to make his visit sometime Monday afternoon, both CNN and CNBC reported. Other tech CEOs to have made the pilgrimage to Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Florida, include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Chew’s visit coincides with a critical moment for TikTok, as the company continues to appeal a bill passed earlier this year that would force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell the app or face a ban in the U.S.
Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress spent much of the past year trying to pass a bill that would ban the app, which the company claims is used by about 170 million Americans, due to security concerns about its parent company’s relationship with the Chinese government.
The bill was passed by the Senate with rare bipartisan support in April, and was quickly signed into law by President Joe Biden. TikTok filed a lawsuit challenging the ban in court, accusing the law of violating Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech.
Last week, a federal appeals court ruled against the company and upheld the law. Lawyers for TikTok filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the high court to temporarily block the law from going into effect on Jan. 19.
TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast about the appeal or their CEO’s visit to Mar-a-Lago.
During his first term in office, Trump tried unsuccessfully to ban TikTok, but has since reversed course and promised to protect the app.
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth 34 points, and there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” Trump repeated at a news conference on Monday. Most exit polls show that Trump lost voters aged 18-29 to Kamala Harris, but he clearly improved his margins in the age group since the 2020 election.
