To the low reverberations of “Seven Nation Army,” President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has joined TikTok.
The move marks the president’s attitude shift toward the short-form video app. During his first administration, Trump sought to ban the app or force its sale over concerns about its Chinese ownership and potential national security issues.
However, after TikTok’s U.S. operations were spun off into a joint venture, leaving ByteDance with a 19.9% minority stake and American investors with 80.1%, the president seems less worried.
Last Friday, a memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel went out to federal officials, allowing the app to be downloaded on government devices.
Worldwide, TikTok has been downloaded over 5.48 billion times. About two-thirds of TikTok users are between 18 and 34 years old. The average user spends 95 minutes per day on the platform.
In the days following the announcement, Cabinet staffers prepared videos to launch their accounts on Tuesday. What hit TikTokers’ screens on Cabinet debut day varied enormously from department to department.
Some videos were AI generated. Some were emotional. Several were rather confusing. Others played rap while hyping up their administrators.
In the case of the USDA, the department has hit the TikTok ground running. The account shared an 18-second video taken Monday of Secretary Brooke Rollins debating Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., during a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting.
Before the TikTok clip began, Gillibrand told Rollins that fertilizer prices are higher now than they were when Trump took office.
In the TikTok, Rollins began, “That is not true, senator. And let me tell you what New York is stressed out about is the fact that your state is taking prime farmland and turning it into solar farms. That is absolutely inexcusable.”
After two hours of being up, the video had a couple thousand views and a handful of comments, most of them positive.
This is not the first time the Trump administration has attempted to spread to other social media platforms. Last October, several agencies started official accounts on the progressive alternative to X, Bluesky. For the Department of Homeland Security, the stint only lasted three months.
As for Trump’s original hesitancy about TikTok, questions still remain as to whether the Chinese Communist Party can influence the algorithms that dictate Americans’ For You pages.
The best Cabinet content creators thus far are ...
Department of Energy — “No one man should have all that power.”
Department of Education — A nod to the WWE empire of Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s husband.
Department of the Interior — “Interior has never been badder. Never been fatter.”
Health and Human Services Secretary John F. Kennedy Jr. — “The people want to know, why do you wear jeans when you work out?”
Treasury Department — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 63, bops his head alongside rapper Nicki Minaj.
TikTok users are still waiting for the emergence of department heavy weights, including the State Department and the Department of War.