Faced with an April 5 deadline, the White House is reportedly weighing a "high-level agreement" for Oracle to be the winner of the TikTok sweepstakes under a forced deal to decouple the application from its Chinese roots.
Vice President JD Vance alluded to the potential sale agreement Friday as required by Congress amid national security concerns with China-based ownership of the popular social media app that requires forced technology transfer, giving the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' data.
Sources told Politico that Oracle founder and Executive Chair Larry Ellison, a longtime backer of President Donald Trump, is the leading bidder of the agreement the White House is weighing, but the sources express concern that national security might remain compromised.
Congress, in a bipartisan push, passed a law that former President Joe Biden signed that required the sale of TikTok by its China-tied parent ByteDance, but sources told Politico that Oracle's agreement might only provide a cursory fix to address concerns.
That is why lawmakers are bringing in Oracle to talk about the security details this week, according to the report.
"If the Oracle deal moves forward, you still have this [algorithm] controlled by the Chinese," a source told Politico. "That means all you are doing is saying 'trust Oracle' to disseminate the data and guarantee there is no 'back door' to the data."
Vance said Friday that he was hopeful a deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. will be wrapped up by the early April deadline.
"There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise," Vance said aboard Air Force Two.
Questions about the future of the popular video sharing app have continued to linger since a law requiring its China-based parent company to divest or face a ban took effect Jan. 19. After taking office, Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve by signing an executive order that delayed enforcement of the statute until April 5.
Vance, along with national security adviser Michael Waltz, were tapped by Trump to find an approved buyer.
"We'd like to get it done without the extension," Vance said. "I think the question is, What is the equity ownership of the new joint venture? How do you do the contracts for all the investors, the customers, the service providers?
"The deal itself will be very clear, but actually creating those thousands and thousands of pages of legal documents, that's the one thing that I worry could slip."
Trump has previously said the deadline on a TikTok deal could be extended further if needed.
He has also proposed terms in which the U.S. would have a 50% stake in a joint venture. The administration has not provided details on what that type of deal would entail.
Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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