Thread by @firstadopter

This WSJ piece shows how fluid the situation is: “Al­lies of the pres­i­dent reached out to Mi­crosoft Sat­ur­day evening, urg­ing it to post a sim­ple, pos­i­tive mes­sage on Twit­ter sig­nal­ing that Mi­crosoft wanted to help keep Tik­Tok alive, and in Amer­i­can hands.”

“These peo­ple told the com­pany the pres­i­dent was warm­ing to a deal and urged Mi­crosoft of­fi­cials to seize the op­por­tu­nity.”

??? “The pro­posed trans­ac­tion gained the bless­ing of se­nior Trump of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steven Mnuchin, who saw value in an Amer­i­can com­pany get­ting ac­cess to so­phis­ti­cated Tik­Tok al­go­rithms that de­cide what videos users are served.”

Key detail that may move needle “prom­inent Tik­Tok ac­count..young con­ser­v­a­tives, called Con­ser­v­a­tive-Hy­pe­House, posted to the plat­form point­ing to seven bil­lion views the hash­tag #Trump2020 has re­ceived on Tik­Tok [versus] 900,000 views #Biden2020 has re­ceived.”

wsj.com/articles/micro…

NYTimes with more detail. White House internal infighting/deliberation by getting others to Tweet is incredible: "Several .. including .. Steven Mnuchin, reached out to Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina .. to ask him to intervene." nytimes.com/2020/08/02/bus…

NYTimes: "After speaking with Microsoft officials a few times, Mr. Graham eventually tweeted about the deal ... The tweet caught Mr. Trump’s eye, prompting a call between the two in which Mr. Graham told the president .. he stressed the political risks of banning the app."

NYTimes: "On Sunday, Mr. Trump spoke with Microsoft officials after becoming convinced that he was heading off a political issue and solving a security risk"