No Extension of TikTok Deadline, Says Trump

President Donald Trump said Thursday the deadline set for Chinese company ByteDance to sell its famous short video app TikTok's US assets will not be extended, reports Reuters.

“It’ll either be closed up or they’ll sell it,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Michigan. “There will be no extension of the TikTok deadline.” 

TikTok did not respond immediately to a request for comment.  

ByteDance has been looking to pick a buyer so that it can finalize a deal by mid-September and fulfill Trump's order to divest the properties of TikTok.

TikTok is best known for videos of dancing people, which go viral among adolescents. But US officials have expressed concern that information may be passed on to Beijing about those who use the site. TikTok has said that exchanging user data with the Chinese authorities would not comply with any requests.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley, Trump's close ally, told Reuters earlier Thursday he did not favor extending the deadline either.

Hawley said he did not back a result that did not include a complete sale.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that TikTok’s prospective buyers were discussing four ways to structure an acquisition from ByteDance, which include buying the app’s US operations without key software.

“I’m sure there are any number of backdoors that are built into the code and of course ByteDance knows exactly what they are, so there needs to be a clean, clear, total separation,” Hawley said.