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Carol, let's turn to TikTok. Now this is such a big issue in Washington. We're joined by Frank McCord, executive chairman of McCourt Global and founder of Project Liberty, which have made a formal offer to acquire the social media giant less than two weeks ago, not long before the band deadline. Frank, I wanted to start with the reprieve
that President Donald Trump signed hours after taking office. How has that complicated efforts by you and other bidders perhaps to get byt Dance to come to the table to talk about a sale.
Well, I really haven't complicated anything from our perspective, Mike, where you just continue to you know, chug along, and we're prepared here. We're hanging around the hoops, so to speak, waiting for bike Dance to make a decision. And if it takes a little bit more time, so be it. But you know, we feel where in a really unique
position to buy us TikTok. We're the only ones that actually put a bid in and submitted to the Department of Justice before the original deadline, and where we were ready to roll, but for a signature from BYT Dance, So we continue to be ready. We have more and more conversations, there's more and more excitement around this. We had a fabulous couple of days in Davos where there
was great excitement around the project. So yeah, I've remain optimistic and I think we just have to give BYT Dance time to sort this out, but I believe they will. Buying us TikTok without the Chinese technology is the way forward.
What if you heard back from Byte Dance in response to this offer, Have they been engaging much at all? And would President Donald Trump be in position to perhaps help you get them to really get the discussions going.
Well, my hope is that President Trump can be, you know, a deal maker here and help get this a deal done by convincing By Dance to actually sell us TikTok and not shut it down. I mean, those are the two choices here, and By Dance themselves have been pretty silent. I mean, they've acknowledged receipt of our offer, but I think quite frankly, they're they're digesting everything. I think their hope originally was relief from the Supreme Court, which they
did not get. As you well know, and now I think they're in a new reality, and so they're confronted with a shutdown or a sale, and we believe that a sale is the best way forward. It will keep the opp lit up and as I say it, without the Chinese technology, why not sell?
Who have you been talking to? Where's the excitement in Dallas?
It's interesting. We had a little house called Future House that on the promenade and was lined with different AI products being marketed and and so forth. It was the theme really of Davos this year, and Carolyn our house Future House had a long line outside.
Of people who want to invest with you, though, Frank you speaking to mister Beest, for example, because he's joined another consult him, it seems.
Well, mister Beasts has joined all consortiums, so he's interested in keeping his options open. I've talked to Jimmy. Others have talked to Jimmy. You've read the reports that he has not aligned with a single bidder, But put that aside. I think the people that were really interested in of
course interested in seeing what will happen with TikTok. But as I've said over and over again, this is an opportunity to actually reimagine how the internet works and give people ownership and control of their identity and their data and their relationships. And that's very exciting to people and including by the way, TikTok influencers.
And that is what sets you apart the fact that you're building to a new tech stack basically, and a decentralized one at that. Frank, what does it mean to potentially work with the US government? Would you want to have the US government also buying, in fact talking in the US government. We're just going to have to listen in to President Trump just one moment, Frank, sit with us. We were just asking you if you'd work alongside Trump.
He's thinking about potentially having a US the government own a piece of TikTok.
Well, yeah, we absolutely want to work alongside President Trump, and I think he can be very very helpful. I do think ultimately the US TikTok is going to be in the hands of the private sector and totally disentangled from the Chinese technology. I think that's really clear in the legislation and was made doubly clear. You know on pages five, five and six of the Supreme Court decision
that their Congress is looking for a complete disentanglement. And that's Caroline, which puts us in a unique position because we have the tech stack. We've been building it for the last five years to move the user base and the data onto This is.
A story that will evolve. We thank you so much for your patients coming life from Rome. Frank McCourt, executive chairman of the Court Global and founder of Project Liberty. We hope we will come back as the negotiations continue.