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The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether it will uphold a law banning TikTok in the US if it's not sold by its Chinese parent company by January nineteenth.
I am Romaine Bostic.
And I'm Scarlet Fou and we've been reading analyst notes that indicate that the oral arguments suggest to some folks that the Supreme Court is likely to accept Congress's ban of TikTok, which would takeffect on January nineteenth, one day before the inauguration.
Yeah, and it's kind of interesting. I mean, this hearing's been going on for a while and we've gotten some trips and drabs of information, but we're still waiting for kind of a formal announcement from the court about what they will or won't do.
And so far, the Supreme Court justices have signaled that they may uphold, of course, this upcoming ban or forced to divest the company by the Chinese owner. Byte Dance. Frank McCourt leads internet advocacy group Project Liberty, and he sent a formal offer to China's Bike Dance in the hopes of buying TikTok head of that new law taking effect.
Take a listen, were the right buyers because we have put all the pieces together, We have the funding, we've worked through all the legal issues.
We've put a formal offer, as.
You point out, right in front of Byte Dance, so they have something now to react to, and most importantly, we have the clean American tech stack. In order to sell, they need to enter into an agreement, which is why we put a formal offer in front of them in the last twenty four hours.
Joining us now for more on this effort is one of the names backing the project Liberty Bid for TikTok, a partner of Frank Lacourt. He is Kevin O'Leary, chairman of o'liary Adventures. Kevin, it's good to speak with you. As you know, any sale of TikTok would require consent from China's Byte Dance. What's the specific argument that your group is making to them for why it's in their best interest to a divest and b sell to you.
Well, I give up forty billion dollars worth of value.
Why is that good for anybody?
You've got to remember that within Byte Dance are some of the world's largest financial institutions as shareholders, including many billions worth of American dollars, and so one of the options if this plays out the way I listen to every word of the hearing, so I'm obviously an interested party, and the government made a very clear case that this is not about free speech. It will be freer and
there'll be lots of speaking after we buy it. This has everything to do with the spyware aspect of byte Dance, and they're not going to tolerate it anymore. Why this bipartisan order is going to be upheld, I believe that to be the case. When that occurs could be as early as next week, could be today, We don't know. The company will have a binary decision either to shut it down, turn it off, or find a buyer. The
only syndicate is our offer last night. So we would like to engage in a process obviously, and we're willing buyers.
But the real issue for byte.
Dance and the Supreme Leader of China is what message do you send to the world world's capital pools when you're competing to become the largest economy on earth that on a whim you would erase thirty forty fifty billion dollars worth of value and just take your bicycle and go home. I mean, that is a very bad look if you're trying to raise capital at the lowest cost. So my thinking is that somebody's going to say, wait a second, yeah, we should sell it and let it
go on. And that's what I'm hoping, and so is Frank So.
Kevin, you've been vocal about wanting to buy TikTok for a while now, for almost a year, and you've floated this twenty billion dollar number without the algorithm purchasing TikTok. But without that algorithm, why or how is TikTok worth that amount if you don't get the famous for you recommendation engine.
You know, I'm very familiar with this platform and have been using it for years through the proxy of all the companies I invest in. I have the data every Tuesday on cap on every single social media platform. So because I don't have the data room yet, I'm just going to give you some estimates. There's about seven million small businesses products sort of between one and three million in sales, five to five hundred employees, represent sixty two
percent of job creation in America. Most of them are on TikTok and they're all my people.
These are two generations of shark tankers.
I'm going to guess that ninety five percent of them know me and I would like to bring them on the journey with me. And I want to use equity crowdfunding to do that so they can be my partner going at the same deal I'm investing in, and we go into this deal together. Now we're going to add a lot of features that TikTok doesn't have. And we've
been talking about this together. And one of the reasons that my Cord and Olier got together in the first place is we both have things the other doesn't have, so it makes sense to merge. But one of the things I want to do, and so does Frank, is to say, okay, these people are partners if they have their personal data on it. Like take me, for example, I'm a watch collector. I'm not interested in car ads.
I don't collect cars. I collect watches. I only want to see watch adds, right, and if you're going to sell my data, I want a piece of the action.
We'll do that.
We'll also make it interoperable. If you're posting. If you're President Trump, you're posting on truth Social click here to populate TikTok. We we'll open that for him. We'll open that for any platform. So that adds a lot of value and makes it, what I like to say, whimsically, we'll make TikTok wonderful again.
A shout out to of course your nickname. Frank McCourt has said that the group plans to work with Donald Trump to close a deal. Have you talked recently with presidentlect Trump specifically about TikTok? I asked, because it's not totally clear where the President elect stands on this. I mean he was for the band and now he's not so much for the band.
Yes, last weekend specifically on this topic, and I'm going tomorrow again tomorrow logos specifically for this topic. We intend to work on a bipartisan basis with both parties as we have to currently. If the order gets turned back to the executive that's Biden, he has the right to extend it for ninety days and then of course at twelve oh five on the January twentieth, we're working for Trump. So this, you know, entrepreneurship and TikTok is a bipartisan platform.
So we're working hard with both administrations right now, keeping them in the loop, letting them know everything.
We're doing, asking to work with them.
Regardless of what the outcome is, you know, in terms of timing of the decision. But we think it's going to happen very shortly and probably next week, and we will need to be working with the Trump with Trump and I also think probably Mike, Mike Waltz, I mean, whoever is going to be the oversight on it.
We're going to work with them.
Whatever they need, We're going to give them.
Kevin remain bossic here. I am curious about the idea that for some reason they do get a reprieve from the court and it does open up opportunity for you and Frank to move forward with this here. Do you worry at all about kind of the legal morass around this?
I mean, even if the Supreme Court kids it's clearance, there's still sort of an international legal maras that is going to hang over this, I would think, and I do wonder about how you navigate that in a world that is just going to be a lot different, let's face it, over the next few years.
Well, one of the reasons Frank and I got together. You may find this strange, is we both have six one seven area codes on our cell phone. I know that sounds nuts, but that's eighty percent of a deal because you got you You're a Boston dude if you have a six one seven, a real Boston dude, because they don't give that number out anymore. So I knew we'd know everybody in each other's teams, and in fact we did.
We love hairball deals.
We love crazy complicated hairball deals because it's.
A mote that's you know, I don't know who's going to compete with us.
I really don't know who's got what we have together.
Bring it, if you got it, bring it.
Okay, Well, then let's get to this idea of the idea of what the social media space looks like, Kevin and the competition in there. I mean, we're all making our choices about where we want to be, how we engage here. I've talked with Frank a lot, and I know he has a very grand vision for what he thinks social media should be. A way to make it more informative, maybe even a little kinder, and certainly more consistent here. I assume you kind of have the same ethos.
Yes, I agree with everything in terms of his philosophy of opening up and democratizing the data.
But I want to take it even a step further.
To me, TikTok is the world's largest television network.
As soon as Frank.
And I get done here getting this set up, We're going to India, Switzerland, France, Germany, England, Canada. We will have this lit up everywhere people believe in democracy and freedom of speech, and we will own and be part of the largest television network on earth. That is the vision that we both share. This is not about the money. This is a legacy deal for us. I mean, this is a This deal is global, it's huge, it's complicated, it's got a million hairballs on it, and.
It's just perfect for us.
Kevin, I'm gonna leave it there, Kevin O'Leary, Chairman of O'Leary Ventures, as we will wait the Supreme Court's decision here and whether to uphold that band on TikTok