Trump Says Sale Of TikTok To Oracle Has His Approval

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th September, 2020) US President Donald Trump says he has approved the purchase of TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, to US software company Oracle.

"I have given the deal my blessing," Trump told reporters on Saturday, adding "it will have nothing to do with China, it'll be totally secure, that's part of the deal."

The US president also said that the deal would include a $5 billion donation to an education program.

On Friday, ByteDance filed a complaint with the US Federal district court in the District of Columbia, challenging the Trump administration's recent decision to block TikTok in the US.

The US Commerce Department said on Friday that Trump's executive orders were going to block US users from accessing the Chinese social media application called WeChat from September 20 and TikTok from November 12. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration was going to continue vetting a deal between TikTok and Oracle to determine if that would assuage Trump's concerns on the national security threat allegedly posed by TikTok.

Earlier this month, US media reported that Oracle was going to be announced as TikTok's tech partner but that the deal was probably not going to be structured as an outright sale. microsoft announced last week that ByteDance would not be selling parts of TikTok's operations to Microsoft