President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would be open to the possibility of having his billionaire ally Elon Musk buy the U.S. operations of TikTok in his latest comments on the popular social media platform.

He previously floated a joint venture, saying that the US should be entitled to half of the app.

The app, which has over 170 million American users, was directed to either sell its US operations to an American company or face a ban effective from Jan 19.

President Donald Trump has said he’s open to the possibility of either Tesla boss and “first buddy” Elon Musk or Oracle chief Larry Ellison buying TikTok.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is required to sell the app to a U.S.-based buyer or face a nationwide ban.

Elon Musk has indicated that he’s open to resurrecting the defunct video platform, Vine, after a ban shut down TikTok over the weekend to millions of users in the U.S. Musk, who owns social media rival X,

Elon Musk criticized the situation where TikTok operates in the US, but X is banned in China, calling it unbalanced and emphasizing the need for change, while also expressing his long-standing opposition to banning TikTok.

In a recent post on X, Elon Musk voiced concerns over the ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China regarding social media platforms, specifically TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). Musk, who owns X,