Trump wants $5 billion from TikTok deal to teach people ‘the real history’ of US
The back-and-forth of the TikTok deal has been rocky, but President Donald Trump is certain that he wants to use the deal to create a $5 billion fund to “educate people” about the “real history of our country.”
“I think Walmart is going to buy it along with Oracle,” Trump said on Saturday at a rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He went on to say that as part of the deal, he requested “$5 billion into a fund for education so we can educate people as to real history of our country — the real history, not the fake history.”
President Trump in August issued an executive order requiring the sale of TikTok by ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, to an American company. The proposed deal would see Oracle and Walmart collectively taking a 20% stake in a newly created entity, TikTok Global, which would operate in the US.
The president previously expressed a desire for the companies to make a payment to to the US Treasury as part of the TikTok deal. Now he has focused instead on the creation of a $5 billion education fund. It is not yet clear which companies would pay into such a fund.
Trump told rally attendees that TikTok is going to move to the United States — likely Texas — which will create 25,000 jobs, if it all goes as he planned.
“My only problem is they did it so fast I should have asked for more,” Trump said of the TikTok deal.
Trump also addressed education last week when he talked about “the liberal indoctrination of America’s youth” during a Constitution Day speech.
In his speech, Trump attacked the 1619 Project, an ongoing New York Times project created in August 2019 on the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. The project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,” according to the New York Times.
Trump, reacting to reports that the 1619 projects would be taught in California schools, wrote on Twitter in early Sept., “Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!”
It’s important to note that, if the deal proceeds, the newly created TikTok company would control the money in the fund and decide how it’s invested.
