The White House’s new TikTok account features a clip of Donald Trump berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, just days after cozying up to him during a high-stakes peace summit in Washington, D.C..
Despite previously labelling the Chinese-owned app a threat to national security and demanding it be sold, the White House, nevertheless, launched its own official account, and kicked things off with a video captioned “America we are BACK! What’s up TikTok?”
Two more videos soon followed, one of which featured quick cuts of the White House exterior accompanied by the caption “We’re so back,” while the other showcased several heavily edited moments of Trump smack-talking, insulting critics, and dancing to the YMCA.
Among them was a clip of the now-infamous Oval Office argument between Trump and Zelensky back in February, in which the president yelled, “You don’t have the cards.” Edited out of the clip was Zelensky’s retort, in which the wartime president tells Trump and JD Vance, “We’re not here to play games.”
The clip’s inclusion is a curious one, given that both sides were keen to downplay the disagreement and repair tensions during Monday’s summit at the White House. Zelensky, donning a suit instead of his usual combat attire, gifted Trump a golf club and presented the first lady a handwritten letter from his wife, Olena, thanking her for challenging Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump, meanwhile, presented Zelensky with symbolic keys to the White House and later posted a video of himself praising the Ukrainian president’s golf game.
“I just watched your swing. I know a lot about golf, and your swing is great,” Trump said in the video shared by the Ukrainian veterans organization, United by Golf. “You’re an amazing person, and you just keep playing golf and doing all of the other things. Your country is a great country. We’re trying to bring it back to health.”
The White House is desperately trying to keep both Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and Ukraine onside as Trump attempts to organize a three-way meeting between himself, Zelensky, and Vladimir Putin.
Putin has previously shown no interest in meeting Zelensky, but Trump insists that position has now changed.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said Putin had “agreed to” a meeting with Trump and Zelensky following the call. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later suggested that was still to be confirmed and that, “Any contacts involving top officials must be prepared with the utmost care.”
Congress previously voted overwhelmingly to ban TikTok last year if parent company ByteDance did not sell to a U.S. buyer, although the deadline for a sale has been extended three times with no concrete deal in sight. The current deadline is less than a month away, on September 17.
The White House’s presence on the app, which Trump is known to have a soft spot for after crediting it for helping him reach younger voters during the 2024 presidential campaign, is perhaps a sign that the app is here to stay.
“The Trump administration is committed to communicating the historic successes President Trump has delivered to the American people with as many audiences and platforms as possible,” Leavitt said in a statement after the account went live.
The Daily Beast has reached out to The White House for further comment.
