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Murdoch Paper Tears Into Trump Over His TikTok ‘Blunder’

The WSJ suggests the president has opened a “back door for Beijing” to harvest data from federal officials.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has blasted President Donald Trump for flip-flopping on whether he considers China “a security threat or not.”

The newspaper’s editorial board was referring to a decision by the Department of Justice last month to lift a ban on TikTok, allowing the video-sharing app to be used on federal government devices.

In 2022, Congress passed a law requiring executive branch agencies to remove TikTok from federal devices over security concerns surrounding its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

On July 16, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel declared that the law no longer applies after ByteDance sold a majority stake in the U.S. version of TikTok to a group of mostly U.S.-based investors. The Chinese company retained a 19.9 percent stake as part of the deal while continuing to control TikTok’s algorithm and source code.

The Journal’s editorial board suggested the move has effectively created a “back door for Beijing” to harvest data from federal officials.

“DOJ claims the ban no longer applies because TikTok has been restructured. ‘Congress banned only the version of TikTok that shares the same problematic ownership features,’ DOJ says. Well, no,” the board wrote.

“The 2022 law banned ‘any successor application or service developed or provided’ by or owned by its Chinese parent, ByteDance.

“The supposedly new TikTok is still partly owned by and run on code developed by ByteDance,” it added. “That means there’s still a risk that ByteDance, and thus the CCP, could surveil federal officials. Mr. Trump is compounding his blunder of letting TikTok continue operating in the U.S.”

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Security concerns surrounding TikTok have been prevalent for years. In April 2024, another bipartisan bill was passed by Congress that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sold the app to an American company.

However, in December 2024, then-President-elect Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay enforcement of the ban until one day before his second inauguration, resulting in the app briefly going offline for U.S. users on Jan. 18.

On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order granting TikTok a 90-day reprieve from being shut down in the U.S. The deadline was repeatedly extended until the deal with U.S. investors was finalized in January 2026.

Last month, a flurry of top officials, including Cabinet members, publicly launched accounts on TikTok after the Justice Department advised it was now safe for federal employees to do so.

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“The Trump team recently also barred the sale of future electric cars by Polestar (partly owned by a Chinese company), including those made in the U.S., over concerns its Chinese-linked software poses a potential cyber risk,” the Journal’s editorial board added.

“TikTok presents a larger risk, and Mr. Trump is mistaken if he thinks it doesn’t.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

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