By Mike Bedigan

Copyright independent

President Donald Trump quipped that he would like to make the TikTok algorithm “100% MAGA” as he signed an executive order on a deal that will transfer control of the Chinese social media app to a U.S. business group.

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office Thursday, the president announced Chinese president Xi Jinping had approved a proposed deal that met American national security concerns and would be valued at around $14 billion.

Asked whether the platform would now recommend more MAGA-related content, Trump replied “I always like MAGA-related. If I could, I’d make it a hundred percent MAGA related.”

If I could make it one hundred percent MAGA, I would,” he said. “But it’s not going to work out that way unfortunately. No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly.”

Then-President Joe Biden signed legislation last year calling for China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok’s assets to an American company by early this year or face a nationwide ban. Trump, during his first term, attempted to ban the company from operating in the U.S. via executive action, but the effort was abandoned after a court challenge.

Under the terms of the deal, a new joint-venture company will oversee TikTok’s U.S. business, with ByteDance retaining less than a 20 percent stake. Tech giant Oracle, investment firm Silver Lake Partners, and the MGX investment fund will reportedly control around 45 percent.

Further details of the investors and specific businesses are set to follow, though Dell CEO Michael Dell, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch have all been mentioned previously.

“They’re very well known people,” Trump told Fox News Sunday. “Larry Ellison [of Oracle] is one of them. He’s involved, he’s a great guy. Michael Dell is involved… Rupert is probably gonna be in the group. I think they’re going to be in the group. Couple of others, really great people, very prominent people.”

Ellison and Dell are both business leaders who’ve made their support for the president and his party known previously. The Oracle co-founder was featured at a Starlink presentation at the White House alongside Elon Musk at the beginning of this year, while Dell participated in a CEO roundtable hosted by the president in June.

A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Independent that the Murdochs were involved in conversations with the White House on the issue, despite the tumultuous relationship between the patriarch and the president.

Murdoch senior has been a past supporter of Trump through his media companies, though he is now being sued for $10 billion by the president, after the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp, published a story accusing Trump of sending Jeffrey Epstein a “bawdy” birthday card – a claim the president has vehemently denied.

The pair was pictured attending a U.K. state dinner in honor of Trump at Windsor Castle, hosted by King Charles.

No representatives from ByteDance were present in the Oval Office Thursday for the signing, and the company hasn’t acknowledged that a transaction is taking place, CNBC reports. The Chinese embassy in Washington also did not immediately respond to a request for comment fromThe Associated Press to confirm that China has signed off on the proposed framework deal.

News of the new deal comes after a report from the Pew Research Center, published Thursday, found that around 43 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, higher than any other social media app including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Many U.S. lawmakers have argued that the app posed a national security threat for a variety of reasons. Lawmakers are uncomfortable with ByteDance’s alleged connections to the Chinese Communist Party and laws in China they say would have required the company to hand over Americans’ personal information or other data to Chinese officials if asked.

In his comments to reporters, Trump said that the only kickbacks the U.S. government would receive from the deal amounted to “taxes” paid by the new U.S. commercial entity in charge of the app.

Still, others on Capitol Hill have expressed distrust in the app’s algorithm, either due to the spread of misinformation or political messages that clash with official U.S. policy — including content critical of Israel’s siege of Gaza.

In January, Trump boasted that his actions had “saved” the app for its millions of American users, many of whom were unhappy with news of the ban. The president also said at the time that “we’re going to make a lot of money” with the deal, presumably referring to American buyers. The app’s owners, meanwhile, thanked the Republican president with a message sent to all U.S-based users.

Some progressives, in the months since January and even the 2024 election, have grumbled that the legislation was a trap for Democrats and put centrist members of the party, including then-President Joe Biden, on the wrong side of an unpopular ban.

Reacting to a post from Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer assuming that the eventual American board members of TikTok would likely be pulled from a list of pro-Trump billionaire donors, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida tweeted on Saturday: “I’m not an “I told you so” kind of guy. But y’all remember that stupid TikTok ban? I voted No on that one.”