Trump’s Shady TikTok Deal Will Have Oracle “Retrain” Your Algorithm

President Trump plans to “save” TikTok by handing it over to America’s oligarchs. 

A senior White House official confirmed Monday that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, plans to move an 80 percent stake of its company to America’s richest, most powerful men. ByteDance will create a separate, American copy of its infamous algorithm to lease to a new group spearheaded by Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz, Larry Ellison’s Oracle, and the private equity firm Silver Lake. Ellison and Oracle will then control U.S. user data and be able to shape the algorithm as they see fit. 

“The algorithm will be retrained from the ground up and protected by Oracle to ensure Americans’ data is safeguarded and foreign influence is removed,” a senior official told Fox News.

Trump, who has floated banning and saving TikTok multiple times now, has given the men 120 days to finalize a deal. On Sunday, the president also confirmed that Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell and conservative media moguls Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch will also likely be involved in the deal.

The involvement of conservative billionaires and technocrats in the deal has raised valid concerns over the future of free speech. Conservatives are on the record blaming TikTok, for example, for the fact that the overwhelming majority of young Americans are opposed to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. While writing for Bari Weiss’s Zionist The Free Press, former Republican Representative and current Palantir “head of defense” Mike Gallagher outright blamed TikTok’s algorithm for making young people “support Hamas.”    

Gallagher isn’t alone. In fact, his position is identical to the rest of the GOP.

“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts,” Senator Mitt Romney said during a panel in May of last year. “So I’d note that’s of real interest, and the president will get the chance to make action in that regard.”

Now, that algorithm—and your data— will be retrained and refiltered by Oracle and Ellison, who has a very close relationship with the Israeli Defense Forces and believes that “there is no greater honor” than supporting Israel.

Charlie Kirk’s memorial was apparently just another opportunity for the president to espouse his typical talking points.

The Sunday service intended to honor Kirk’s legacy featured his family, friends, and crucial members of the Trump administration, from Vice President JD Vance to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Speaking before an arena of mourners, some of the country’s most high-profile Republicans painted Kirk as a martyr for the conservative movement, who they credited with transforming contemporary American youth politics.

But Donald Trump’s turn behind the lectern was a remarkable divergence from the lineup. While the president used some of his time allotment to heap praise onto Kirk, he also leveraged the name and memory of one of the GOP’s biggest firebrands to bolster his typical diatribe.

For more than 40 minutes, Trump lamented over late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, aired the supposed success of his economic tariff plan, damned the rate of autism in America, and even negated the message of Kirk’s widow by promising to enact more political violence and retribution against his administration’s perceived enemies.

“Just like Charlie and Erika made Turning Point hot, we are looking at a country that has a chance to attain a level like never before—tariffs are making us rich again, richer than anybody ever thought was possible,” Trump said. “And the only ones challenging them are people that hate our country, or foreign countries that are paying a price.”

“The election was big, but the tariffs—because of the election—came in.”

Trump also used some of his air time to talk about his planned deployment of the National Guard to Chicago, promising the stadium that he would bring the hard fist of the White House to several of the country’s biggest cities.

“I’m so proud of Washington, D.C., and now we’re going to Memphis, and we’ll get that one straightened out fast, and then we’re going into some others, but we’re going to go do Chicago, and we’re going to have Charlie very much in mind when we go into Chicago,” Trump told the roaring crowd.

President Donald Trump doubled down Monday on his threat to send Attorney General Pam Bondi after his political enemies.

Speaking to the press on Air Force One, Trump was asked whom he wanted Attorney General Pam Bondi to “focus” on prosecuting.

“Everybody, really,” Trump said.

“There are a lot of crooked people that were here before me. And people that almost destroyed our country,” he said. “If I didn’t win this election, our country would be destroyed.”

But Trump had no problem naming names in a Truth Social post Saturday addressed to Bondi, pressuring the attorney general to get to work prosecuting his political enemies, or risk “killing our reputation and credibility.”

“Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia? ? ? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,’” he wrote.

Trump also celebrated the resignation of Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whom Trump officials had pressured to seek an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Investigators have yet to produce a shred of evidence that James falsified bank documents to secure favorable terms on a mortgage for her Virginia home. Two Trump stooges, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ’s Working Weaponization Group, reportedly urged Siebert to seek an indictment against James at Trump’s direction. When federal prosecutors declined, Pulte reportedly encouraged Trump to fire Siebert and have him replaced with someone else. On Friday, Trump was ready to drop the ax.

Trump called Siebert “A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job” in his Saturday post and claimed that he’d had Siebert fired.

“Lindsey is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,” Trump continued. He later reposted this rant, clarifying that he was writing about Lindsey Halligan, his personal attorney who now serves as special assistant to the president. Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney suggested that Trump hoped to replace Siebert with Halligan to pursue his supposedly “GREAT case” against James.

Maggie Cleary, a new addition to the Justice Department’s Criminal Division who claims to have been wrongly accused of participating in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, has been named acting head of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, delivered a deranged speech at the Sunday memorial service for Charlie Kirk in Arizona.

MAGA “patriots,” Miller claimed, have inherited a civilizing mission from their ancestors. To continue this mission, save humanity, and continue the legacy of Kirk, he said, they must vanquish the “forces of darkness,” their political opponents.

At the beginning of his remarks, Miller said Kirk’s widow, Erika, reminds him of a “famous expression”: “The storm whispers to the warrior that, ‘You cannot withstand my strength.’ And the warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’”

“Erika is the storm,” Miller declared. “We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion.

“Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello,” Miller continued. “Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry,” he said, pulling “us out of the caves and the darkness into the light.

“We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation, and we will defend this world,” he later added.

Addressing “the forces of wickedness and evil,” Miller said: “You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.

“You have no idea the dragon you have awakened,” he warned, as the MAGA movement will strive to “save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, because our children are strong, and our grandchildren will be strong, and our children’s children’s children will be strong. And what will you leave behind? Nothing, nothing.”

The speech was consistent with Miller’s white nationalist sympathies, penchant for unhinged rants against his political enemies, and apparent mission to use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for broader crackdowns. Last week, he vowed to avenge Kirk’s death by “go[ing] after the left-leaning organizations” that, he claimed, “are promoting violence in this country.”

President Trump took the stage at Charlie Kirk’s memorial Sunday evening to promise more political violence and retribution against his enemies moments after Kirk’s wife, Erika, promised to forgive them. Both received similar applause. 

“In a private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was,” Trump said at the podium. “He was a missionary with a noble spirit, and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them.”  

Then Trump went off script, turning the speech into something better suited for a campaign rally than a memorial. 

“That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. And I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry,” he said as the crowd roared with laughter. “I am sorry Erika. But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right. But I can’t stand my opponent.” 

Trump was referencing the slight 180 that Erika Kirk has done in her messaging since her husband’s killing. Initially, she claimed that “the evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done.… If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country.”

This messaging fit in snugly with the other calls for war and revolution against the left from people like Elon Musk and Steve Bannon. But on Sunday, Erika Kirk made a point to emphasize that she forgave Tyler Robinson, her husband’s suspected assassin. 

“My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life.… On the cross, our savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.’ That young man. I forgive him,” she said, evoking the actions of Jesus, while he took his dying breaths, in the Bible. 

Trump made it clear that he saw no value in that, and the crowd ate it up. Asking the president to embody Christlike qualities of forgiveness sounds like an insurmountable task, even for Erika Kirk. 

President Donald Trump will reportedly seek to increase the cost of an H-1B temporary visa by nearly 1,000 percent via a forthcoming proclamation. The program applies to foreign workers with bachelor’s degrees and job offers from U.S. employers in certain specialty occupations.

As soon as Friday, Bloomberg reports, Trump is planning on signing a proclamation barring entry under H-1B without a $100,000 payment. It is a marked increase from the $995 in fees currently required of H-1B applicants (a $215 registration fee, along with $780 for employer petition).

Economics journalist Catherine Rampell of MSNBC described the move as consistent with other Trump administration decisions poised to compromise “America’s role as a global leader in science and innovation,” including gutting the civil service, canceling research grants, and expelling international students.

“These are visas for skilled workers—doctors, scientists, and engineers,” wrote Representative Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat, on X. “This move will hurt US innovation and exacerbate an already serious shortage of medical professionals. In what world does this make sense?”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an American Immigration Council fellow, observed that the move would exacerbate an ongoing shortage of doctors in the U.S.: “Every year, hundreds of doctors get H-1B visas to help fill those gaps,” he noted. “If hospitals had to pay an additional $100,000 fee, it’s possible they would simply give up and not even try to fill positions.”

Reichlin-Melnick also pointed out that the action is “likely to be struck down in court,” given that the U.S. government lacks “statutory authority to impose fees designed to limit the use of a visa.” Sam Peak of the Economic Innovation Group too predicted that the administration will “get sued and lose” over the move, given that the Department of Homeland Security “has a biannual fee schedule where they can change fees after notice and comment.”

President Trump is taking deportation protections away from Syrian immigrants in the midst of a resurgence of militant groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Around 6,000 Syrians are currently living and working in America under Temporary Protected Status. Now they will be forced to return to a country that the United Nations described as “fragile,” and rife with “sectarian tension” just one month ago.

The U.N. reported that Syria still “remained in a volatile and precarious phase” six months after the fall of President Bashar Al Assad in December 2024. “Member States warned of growing risks posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaeda, who continue to view the country as a strategic base for external operations.… The interim Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), faced multiple security challenges, including asserting control over territory and diverse armed factions/fighters, as well as controlling foreign terrorist fighters, and countering ISIL resurgence.”

This does not sound like a stable, amicable situation to abruptly force Syrians to go back to. These people came here as civil war refugees under President Obama, and now they’re being forced back into a situation that has similarly devolved into factional violence.

Former Citizenship and Immigration policy head Amanda Baran told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s revoking of Syrian TPS while the country deals with an internal power struggle is “gutting for the thousands of Syrians here with T.P.S. and the communities in which they live.”

“Conditions in Syria remain dangerous and unstable, clearly warranting an extension under the law,” she continued. “This administration’s disregard for the expertise of human rights experts is having real, dire consequences on the lives of everyday people as demonstrated by this reckless decision.”

But the Trump administration sees it much differently.

“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at Homeland Security. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. T.P.S. is meant to be temporary.”

Syrians will have 60 days to gather their lives and leave the country, or face arrest and forced deportation.

The Trump administration has also spitefully moved to revoke the TPS status of people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cameroon.

If you donate to President Donald Trump’s vanity construction project, then you, too, could have the privilege of leaving a physical stain on American history: In exchange for contributions, donors may be able to have their names etched into the stone of the new White House ballroom.

The ballroom, which will cost roughly $250 million, will be paid for by private donors and the president himself, Trump has said. White House officials have said that nearly $200 million has already been pledged.

So far, Google, tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, government cybersecurity contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, data analysis and surveillance company Palantir, and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin have all donated, with Lockheed Martin donating more than $10 million to the project.

Some officials from donor companies say that their decision to contribute was made out of a desire to show support for Trump while still backing a nonpartisan cause, as the ballroom will outlive the president’s term, according to CBS. Of course, their pledge agreements call the project “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” But that could mean anything!

Indeed, donations to the ballroom may well be even more meaningful to the president than these corporations realized, as its development has proven a balm to Trump while he mourns the death of ally Charlie Kirk. In times of trouble, some people look to family; others look to faith. Trump looks to construction.

Is it a scene “right out” of Goodfellas, or is it just another day under the Trump administration?

That’s the question that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is asking, after he likened Brendan Carr to a “mafioso” over the FCC chairman’s recent threats to punish TV networks that refused to expunge Jimmy Kimmel from the air.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said, I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said on his podcast. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’—that will end up bad for conservatives.”

The Texas Republican further condemned Carr’s actions as “dangerous as hell,” comparing the Trump administration’s slippery attraction to government-enforced censorship to the heinous power of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. Opening the door to that at the federal level would not bode well when Democrats return to power, Cruz said.

“They will silence us,” Cruz continued. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”

But unlike some other conservatives who have chastised the Trump administration’s flagrant First Amendment overstep, Cruz actually wields a unique ability to hold Carr accountable: In addition to his other responsibilities, Cruz serves as the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight authority over the FCC.

At a Politico event earlier this week—before the Kimmel fiasco—Cruz said that the First Amendment “absolutely protects hate speech,” even if it does not shield people from the “consequences” of their speech by their employers.

Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended indefinitely after he made supposedly controversial comments during his Monday night monologue about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin. (Kimmel condemned Kirk’s death as a “senseless murder” but ruffled powerful feathers when he said that MAGA was rushing to claim that Tyler Robinson was “anything other than one of them”—which is technically true.)

On Wednesday, Carr suggested to YouTuber Benny Johnson that the FCC would open an investigation into anyone still platforming the comedian. Sinclair and Nexstar—two of the country’s biggest broadcasters—said they would no longer air Kimmel’s show. The timing was unmistakable: Nexstar, notably, is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday boasting that China had approved a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States under new ownership—but Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to think otherwise.

After the presidents spoke over the phone, Trump posted that they had “made progress on many very important issues,” including “the approval of the TikTok Deal.”

But the first official readout of the call, from an agency in Beijing, made no mention of the deal, according to Politico.

Instead, Xi reiterated China’s long-standing position that negotiations over the app will continue.

“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear,” the readout said. “The Chinese government respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws.… China hopes that the U.S. will provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest in the U.S.”

TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been up in the air for months. Trump has repeatedly pushed back enforcement of a law that requires the platform to either be controlled by a U.S. company or banned. The most recent postponement was Tuesday, when Trump delayed the deadline again until mid-December.

Lawmakers purportedly passed the ban to address national security concerns, and to prevent China from collecting Americans’ data. But ever since the 2024 election, Trump’s become partial to the platform—not for its viral dances or indecipherable Gen Alpha memes, but because he thinks it helped get him elected.