Washington. President Donald Trump on Friday downplayed national security and privacy concerns tied to TikTok and its Chinese parent company, calling them “highly overrated,” while saying he will continue extending the shutdown deadline for the video-sharing platform until a buyer emerges.

Congress approved a US ban on TikTok unless ByteDance, its parent company, sells its controlling stake. But Trump has already extended the deadline three times during his second term, with the next one set for Sept. 17.

“We’re going to watch the security concerns,” Trump told reporters. But he added, “We have buyers, American buyers,” and said the administration would keep granting extensions “until the complexity of things work out.”

The first extension came Jan. 20, his first day in office, through an executive order after the app briefly went dark when Congress’s national ban, later upheld by the US Supreme Court, took effect. The second came in April, when White House officials believed they were close to a deal to spin off TikTok into a US-owned entity, a plan that collapsed after China withdrew following Trump’s tariff announcement.

Trump’s comments came the same week the White House launched its own TikTok account.

“I used TikTok in the campaign,” Trump said. “I’m a fan of TikTok. My kids like TikTok. Young people love TikTok. If we could keep it going.”

The repeated extensions make it increasingly unlikely TikTok will be banned in the US soon. The decision to keep the app running through executive orders has drawn some scrutiny but has yet to face a legal challenge, unlike many of Trump’s other directives.

Public opinion on TikTok remains divided. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that about one-third of Americans support a ban, down from 50 percent in March 2023. Another third said they oppose a ban, while the rest were unsure. Among those favoring a ban, roughly eight in 10 cited concerns about user data security.

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