While TikTok watches a impending federal banDonald Trump’s victory in the presidential election could be a lifeline.

This is a twist for the embattled Chinese social media company. During Trump’s last presidency, it was the president-elect who initiated calls to ban TikTok, which only petered out because he didn’t win his first re-election bid in 2020. But in his 2024 campaign, Trump took a different approach. He written in capital letters on its Truth Social platform, “For everyone who wants to save Tik Tok in America, vote Trump!”

President Biden sign on a bill in April that gives ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, nine months to sell the platform. If ByteDance fails to complete a sale, which is a probable outcome — it will be banned on January 19, 2025, the day before Trump’s inauguration. However, ByteDance has the option to request a 90-day extension, which would put the ball in Trump’s court.

Trump’s reasoning for supporting the TikTok ban in 2020 echoes current bipartisan sentiment among lawmakers who pushed for this legislation. At the time, Trump raised concerns on the Chinese Communist Party potentially having access to Americans’ data (although there has been no public evidence of the CCP’s access to the data of American TikTok users, there has been evidence that ByteDance accessed TikTok user data). Now, the president-elect seems more concerned about how a ban on TikTok would benefit Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook an enemy of the people,” Trump told CNBC in March.

He made similar comments on Truth Social, claims that he doesn’t want a ban on TikTok to cause Meta’s business to grow, as he believes Facebook is “a real enemy of the people.”

Another reason for Trump’s changing views on TikTok could be his relationship with Jeff Yass, a billionaire GOP donor and co-founder of the trading company Susquehanna International Group. Yass and his wife, Janine, have donated more than $96 million to right-wing PACs this election cycle — and Yass also happens to own 7% of ByteDance.

Although Trump’s victory could also be a victory for TikTok, politicians’ campaign promises don’t always come to fruition.