Trump Claims He Has Extra Followers on 'Tic Tac' Than Taylor Swift, however the Numbers Do not Add Up

Donald Trump suffered an entertaining slip of the tongue within the Oval Workplace on Monday when he declared himself primary on ‘Tic Tac’ — the favored breath mint — earlier than clarifying he meant TikTok. What adopted was somewhat extra embarrassing than the mispronunciation: the president’s declare that he was essentially the most adopted individual on the platform, with Taylor Swift ranked at quantity eleven, turning out to be false on each counts.

The Declare That Collapsed Inside Minutes

Talking to reporters on Monday morning, Trump stated new figures launched roughly two days prior had positioned him on the high of TikTok. He framed it as a rhetorical query earlier than delivering his personal punchline.

‘You understand who the primary individual on Tic Tac is by far? Trump, me. I am primary. Taylor Swift was quantity eleven. I am primary on TikTok by far,’ he informed reporters, providing no supporting proof past a reference to an unnamed record.

It took solely minutes to examine. In accordance with Social Blade, a platform that independently tracks follower statistics throughout social media, Trump’s private TikTok account has roughly 16.6 million followers. The precise primary account belongs to Khabane Lane, the French-Senegalese content material creator higher often called Khaby Lame, who has 162.3 million followers. Charli D’Amelio and MrBeast occupy the second and third positions respectively. Trump doesn’t seem within the high ten by any obtainable measure.

Taylor Swift can also be absent from the highest ten, however not as a result of she ranks beneath Trump. Her account holds 33.3 million followers, greater than double the president’s complete. His declare that she sits at quantity eleven was equally unsupported by the revealed information.

What the TikTok Numbers Really Present

The hole between Trump’s claimed place and his precise standing on the platform is hanging. Khaby Lame alone has almost ten instances as many followers because the president. Swift, whom Trump positioned eleven locations beneath himself, has greater than twice his following. The White Home’s official account, maintained individually from his private profile, has round seven million followers, which is fewer nonetheless.

Social media follower counts are one of many few metrics in public life which might be completely goal, publicly obtainable and up to date in actual time. On that foundation, the president’s declare doesn’t survive essentially the most primary scrutiny.

A Difficult Relationship With the Platform He Champions

Trump’s relationship with TikTok has been contradictory for years. Congress overwhelmingly handed laws in 2024 requiring TikTok’s Chinese language father or mother firm ByteDance to divest the platform or face a ban from American app shops, citing nationwide safety issues over information privateness and the potential for algorithmic manipulation. Trump himself signed a 75-day extension on his first day again in workplace to delay the ban whereas negotiations continued.

The matter was finally resolved in September when Trump accredited a divestment plan below which TikTok’s American operations handed to a brand new entity involving Oracle, non-public fairness agency Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX in a deal valued at $14 billion.

On Monday, Trump used his claimed TikTok dominance to argue towards issues about Chinese language affect on the platform. ‘In the event that they affect so badly, I am saying all issues like I really like our nation, we now have to cease Communism,’ he stated. ‘Nice American folks, super enterprise folks, and corporations purchased it.’

The logic was characteristically Trump: if he’s primary, the platform can’t be selling Chinese language pursuits. The issue, as with the follower rely itself, is that the premise doesn’t maintain up.