Hours before taking office for his second term as president, Donald Trump seemingly helped pave the way for TikTok to return in the United States.
But before the 45th and 47th president receives too much credit for helping reverse what had ultimately been an hours-long absence of the popular social media platform, Joy Taylor wanted to remind her audience of the role Trump played in making the ban possible in the first place.
Taking to her Instagram stories on Sunday, the Fox Sports host shared an NPR story from Aug. 2020 with the headline “Trump signs executive order that will effectively ban use of TikTok in the U.S.” At the time, Trump — then in his first term as president — signed an order prohibiting any transactions between TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens, effectively eliminating any advertising revenue the social media platform could receive from U.S. companies.
“Make a problem, let people forget you started it, take credit for fixing a problem you created to make yourself look good,” Taylor wrote in a caption she added to her post. “We are EMBARRASSING.”

As for how we got here, it’s worth noting that Trump’s initial attempted ban on TikTok due to alleged national security concerns never truly had much teeth, with President Joe Biden signing an executive order of his own negating it after taking office months later. Efforts to ban TikTok, however, reemerged last spring, when Congress passed a bill that would ban TikTok completely in the United States unless it divested from ByteDance.
As Trump’s second inauguration approached, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban, further cementing the likelihood of it becoming unavailable in the United States. Trump — who has since become an advocate for the social media platform, where he has grown increasingly popular in the time since his first term — however, had signaled that he would take steps to keep the app available in the U.S., which the platform noted in a message posted to users when it voluntarily restricted access to the app in the country late-Saturday night.
By Sunday morning, TikTok was available in the United States once again, this time with a message thanking Trump for his efforts, which reportedly includes plans to sign an executive order delaying the ban. According to NBC News, the former star of The Apprentice has said he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” to keep TikTok alive in the country.
As for Taylor’s criticism, she’s right that Trump played a significant role in the starting the conversation over whether TikTok should be permitted in the United States, although it’s worth noting that both the Trump and Biden administrations expressed concerns over the platform as a potential national security risk. And despite Trump’s initial attempt, Congress ultimately passed the ban in question under Biden’s watch, setting the stage for his successor to seemingly revive it hours before reassuming office.
In the end, Taylor is right that there’s a certain irony in Trump receiving credit for saving a platform he was once leading the charge on getting rid of. The entire situation, however, is more nuanced than her post suggests and perhaps speaks more to the state of American politics than the decision to keep or ban a social media platform.