Trump Falsely Claims He’s ‘By Far’ No. 1 on TikTok in Bizarre Riff: ‘I’m a Cheerleader for Geniuses’

President Donald Trump falsely claimed he’s “by far” the top account on TikTok in a bizarre riff delivered to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday morning. The president offered no evidence for his claim besides “a list.”

“I’m a cheerleader for geniuses. I love geniuses. I love high I.Q. people,” Trump told reporters. “He is a high I.Q. Person. I love high I.Q. People. I speak to Elon [Musk], I speak to Mark [Zuckerberg], I speak to Jeff [Bezos], everybody … At my first inauguration, none of them were standing behind me, they were just the opposite. At the last inauguration, every one of them was standing behind me. It was sort of… amazing. I speak to all of them, and I encourage them. I want them to be tremendously successful.”

He continued, “Now, there is a thing called TikTok. Have you heard of it? I was watching a show this morning, Maria Bartiromo. She is fantastic. On her show, they were talking about the dangers of TikTok, and it’s Chinese, a whole thing, spying and what they are doing. Well, except it was announced about two days ago, the new numbers just came out, you know who the number one person in Tic Tac is by far?”

“Trump, me. I’m number one… Taylor Swift was number eleven. I’m number one on TikTok by far. The numbers just came out, and I said, ‘Well, I’m hearing about how they influence. They are talking about [how] they’re a tremendous danger because of the influence. If they influence so badly, I’m saying all things like I love our country, we have to stop Communism. We’re doing a lot of things,'” Trump continued.

He then added, “I’m by far number one. It was sent to me by, the list comes out number one and two. I was number one by a lot. So I guess, I don’t know, maybe they are bad, maybe they are not. I know one thing: great American people, tremendous business people, and companies bought it. I called President Xi, and everyone said he was a hard no. I said it’s a good thing for TikTok, but it’s good for us, too. American companies, great ones, own our TikTok, and it is very influential. But I’m number one by a lot.”

Per an article published by Epidemic Sound the same day, Trump is not on the list of the top 10 TikTok accounts. The site cites Senegalese-Italian influencer Khaby Lame as having the most followers on the platform with 162.3 million; Lame is followed by MrBeast (who is third with 129.1 million followers) and BTS (tenth with 80.2 million followers). Swift has 33.5 million followers on the platform; Trump has 16.6 million (the official White House account has 7 million).

In May Trump shared a graphic that claimed videos hashtagged #TRUMP have received 400 billion all-time views on TikTok. Those videos are not limited to those shared only on the president’s account. Trump’s individual account has 121.8 million likes on the platform.

Watch above via Fox News.

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