Donald Trump’s niece says she’s been banned from TikTok after attacking her uncle’s lackey.
Mary Trump is an outspoken critic of the president and his administration, and claimed on Thursday that the Larry Ellison-owned platform has “permanently banned” her.
On her Substack, The Good In Us, Mary said she was informed of two user violations on TikTok, including an attack on Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, after he threatened media outlets over their coverage of Trump’s war with Iran.
“I found out yesterday that I was permanently banned from TikTok,” Mary wrote. “I don’t really know why.”
Ellison’s Oracle owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok U.S., is part of a majority investor group, has a seat on the board, and is a key arbiter of user data and security.
“But TikTok really had to dig deep to find ‘offensive’ content in my account: the first video they flagged was posted back in October 2024,” Mary wrote. “I incurred the second strike for a recent video in which I criticized FCC chair Brendan Carr for threatening to pull the licenses of networks that report the news about the Iran war accurately.”
The Federal Communications Commission chair said he would consider pulling networks’ right to broadcast if they didn’t cover the bombardment of Iran in a way the administration deemed suitable earlier this month.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote on X. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
In an unveiled threat, he then added, “Time for change!”
The administration has sought favorable coverage of the war since it began with joint strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28, despite failing to stick to a single, unified justification for starting the conflict.
The FCC, meanwhile, has not revoked a broadcast TV station license in four decades, Reuters reports.
Carr’s words drew sharp criticism, including from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who said, “If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional.”
Ellison has emerged as one of the most influential billionaires in Trump’s orbit. His name has become household since Paramount+ entered a hostile bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, despite it looking as if Netflix had already made a deal.
Oracle’s involvement with TikTok comes as part of a Trump-friendly investment group that, overall, holds 45 percent of the company’s shares and has taken over operations from the Chinese company ByteDance. The framework for the agreement was announced by the president in September.
At the time, he said, “The United States is getting a tremendous fee-plus—I call it a fee-plus—just for making the deal, and I don’t want to throw that out the window.”
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that this fee would amount to a $10 billion windfall for the government in exchange for keeping the app running in the U.S. ByteDance has retained a 19.9 percent share in the company.
Speaking of her ban, Mary said, “This isn’t exactly surprising. We knew that things at TikTok were going to get bad for left-landing accounts when Donald’s buddy, Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and now in control of a mind-boggling share of American media. When the Ellison deal finally went through, the U.S. Treasury (ostensibly) received a ‘transaction fee’ in the amount of $10 billion.”
“This is a five-alarm fire,” she added.
In a response to the Daily Beast, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung insulted Mary’s intelligence and claimed she “doesn’t have a clue about anything.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and TikTok for comment.
