Short-form video platform TikTok has become the newest battleground for younger, apolitical voters and right-wing influencers are hoping to belatedly capitalize on its growing popularity.
Former president Donald Trump’s arrival on TikTok earlier this year solidified the Right’s increased presence on the platform, despite longstanding national-security concerns related to TikTok parent ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“When you see Donald Trump in all these different situations or just being a normal person, or just doing something that’s seen as kinda funny. Where you see Donald Trump, this mythical figure working at McDonald’s, it’s good meme energy,” former Trump adviser John McEntee told National Review over the phone, referring to Trump’s much-discussed McDonald’s shift in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
Trump rapidly gained one million followers when he joined TikTok and has since increased his following to 13 million users. The Trump campaign’s Team Trump account boasts 3.5 million followers, and several prominent Trump surrogates have built enormous fan bases on TikTok. National Review has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
McEntee has more than 3 million followers on TikTok through the business account for The Right Stuff, a conservative dating app he co-founded. If Trump returns to office, McEntee is expected to hold an important role in the administration.
“You need to speak to voters where they are. So just using TikTok is the right first step and I’ve seen some [Republicans] now, since Trump got on the platform, have followed his lead. And I think the more that do that, the better. TikTok has almost 200 million Americans on it. To not use that tool is crazy. You can reach a lot of people very quickly, and you can get people engaged that might not be super political,” McEntee added.
Right-wing influencers are reaching millions of potential voters leading up to the 2024 election and driving engagement among TikTok’s younger user base. TikTok has an estimated 150 million U.S. users, many of whom are Millennials or Gen-Z Americans. The average TikTok user spends around an hour per day on the platform, and an increasing number of people are regularly getting their news from it.
“Conservatives win when we reach voters where there are. And while there are legitimate concerns that some may have regarding TikTok, one thing is indisputable: it’s where young people are,” said conservative activist C. J. Pearson, national co-chair of the GOP’s youth-advisory council.
“As a conservative, I believe we ought to be in the business of not just preaching to the choir but doing the work to grow the congregation. And that’s exactly why myself, President Trump, and many other conservative creators are engaging heavily on the platform.”
Pearson has upwards of 150,000 followers on TikTok and is a well-known YouTube personality. His comments are echoed by Emily Wilson, a pro-Trump, Los Angeles-based influencer known as Emily Saves America.
“Not only have I been able to create a good-size platform on TikTok and been able to reach a younger audience compared to my other channels. It’s also a way I’ve been able to find other republican creators I otherwise wouldn’t have found. I think young girls see me able to speak my mind and be able to relate to, and it makes them feel less alone and like they can have the courage to stick up for their beliefs as well,” Wilson said through a spokesperson.
Wilson has over 176,000 TikTok followers and 379,000 Instagram followers. She believes Trump’s message is increasingly resonating on the platform compared to his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I will say I do get a lot of hate on specifically TikTok but I always say if they’re not hating me I’m not doing it right. So I’m fine with that. Trumps presence on TikTok is increasingly popular compared to Kamala’s cringe out of touch videos. Young people are feeling the hit of this disaster economy and administration.”
Conservatives were reluctant to join TikTok because of ByteDance’s well-documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a major U.S. adversary. Chrissy Clark, a Turning Point USA contributor with 350,000 TikTok followers and another 123,000 Instagram followers, thinks conservatives made a mistake by not getting on TikTok sooner to counter progressive content.
“I say time and time again – the people who don’t know they’re conservative yet are just normal, logical people that conservatives are LETTING be won over by a liberal echo chamber because conservatives think they’re too good to be participating in culture,” Clark said.
The kind of political content popular on TikTok is oriented towards humor and entertainment rather than the policy debates and arguments one might find on X, the go-to platform for political obsessives. To make an impact, influencers have to deliver ideas in creative ways to take advantage of TikTok’s medium.
“The majority of ‘normies’ are on TikTok,” McEntee said.
“TikTok is just straight entertainment. But if you reach people and have political takes in an entertaining way, it can really wake people up, and I think it can reach a lot of new people.”
President Biden signed bipartisan legislation earlier this year requiring ByteDance to divest from the platform or face a ban from operating in the U.S., an ultimatum TikTok is currently fighting in court. The TikTok ban represented a major victory for China hawks on the right and left alike. Years earlier, the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to force a TikTok divestment through executive action.
McEntee has argued that China’s influence on TikTok is greatly overstated and banning the platform gives Facebook a monopoly on social media, echoing Trump’s position on the forced-divestment bill. TikTok has also attempted to change the narrative through ad campaigns highlighting the ways small businesses use it to increase exposure.