TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entitled “TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms,” as lawmakers scrutinize the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 23, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend President Trump’s inauguration and will sit on the dais next to other tech CEOs including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, according to NBC News sources.
Also expected to attend is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, a Trump transition official told NBC News.
NBC News has reached out to representatives of TikTok and Google for comment, with TikTok declining and Google not immediately responding to the request.
The New York Times was first to report about Chew’s attendance, citing two people familiar with the plans.
The news of the new guest additions comes days before TikTok’s impending ban in the U.S., which could see the app go dark on stores like Google Play and Apple’s app store if the Chinese-owned company does not divest its U.S. subsidiary to an American company.
So far, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has refused to sell, and the Supreme Court has not issued a definite ruling since hearing arguments last Friday on the law that targets TikTok’s ban.
President-elect Donald Trump filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court ahead of last Friday’s argument, asking the court to prevent the ban in favor of the President-elect finding a political solution, though it’s unclear how specifically it would be executed.
Trump has changed his position on TikTok before, eventually waging the app as an effective campaigning tool that helped propel him to the White House in November.
President Joe Biden’s administration is also considering ways to keep TikTok available in the U.S. if the scheduled ban goes into effect on Sunday, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
