President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested that media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who lead News Corp and the Fox Corp., are involved in the deal for U.S.-based owners to take over control of TikTok.
“They’re very well-known people,” Trump told Fox News’ “The Sunday Briefing,” when asked about who was involved in the TikTok deal.
“Larry Ellison is one of them. He’s involved. This great guy, Michael Dell is involved. I hate to tell you this, but a man named Lachlan is involved. Do you know who Lachlan is? That’s a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch,” the president added.
His remarks come one day after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Saturday divulged details about the deal, which would see the U.S. control TikTok’s algorithm.
“This deal means that TikTok will be majority-owned by Americans in the United States. There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans,” Leavitt told Fox News’ “Saturday in America.”
A spokesperson for the White House on Sunday did not immediately respond to questions about whether Lachlan Murdoch would be one of the six Americans to sit on the board to control TikTok, or whether he would be involved in some other capacity.
Murdoch officially took over Fox Corp. and News Corp earlier this month, ending a lengthy succession battle between him and his siblings over who would take over control of the companies from their father, Rupert Murdoch.
The Murdoch family media empire includes conservative-leaning news organizations like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
While Trump and White House administration officials frequently appear on Fox News, the president is currently at odds with The Wall Street Journal. He sued Fox Corp and the elder Murdoch in July for $10 billion in damages after the Journal published an article saying that Trump had sent a letter to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 that included a drawing of a naked woman.
Trump also mentioned that Rupert Murdoch could be involved in the deal, saying on Sunday: “Rupert is, is probably going to be in the group. I think they’re going to be in the group.”
Ellison’s involvement in the TikTok deal was previously known, as the software and cloud computing company that he co-founded, Oracle, will manage the data and privacy aspects of TikTok, Leavitt said Saturday.
Trump’s revelation on Sunday that Dell, the CEO of Dell Technologies, will also be involved with TikTok after its sale was a new detail. Neither the president nor any White House officials have revealed the names of other American business leaders who may be involved with TikTok after the sale takes place.
A spokesperson for Fox Corp. and a spokesperson for Dell Technologies did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
On Sunday, Trump said simply that there would be a “couple of others, really great people, very prominent people,” involved.
“And they’re also American patriots, you know, they love this country, so I think they’re going to do a really good job,” he added.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that U.S. and Chinese officials had reached a “framework” for a deal to facilitate the sale of the platform, which has over 170 million U.S. users, to a U.S.-based owner.
The news of a deal came after Trump has several times extended the deadline for the sale of TikTok to a U.S.-based company since he began his second term in January. The sale is required based on a U.S. law that was passed on a bipartisan basis in Congress last year and signed by then-President Joe Biden.
The law was initially set to go into effect in January, hours before Trump was inaugurated. TikTok briefly shut down in the U.S. at the time until Trump promised that he would not enforce the penalties in the law once he was sworn in.
U.S. officials have for years voiced concerns about the Chinese-based company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, saying that it could be sharing user data with the Chinese government or letting the Chinese government influence the platform’s algorithm.
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