Tick Tock for Trudeau and tick tock for TikTok!
Kevin O’Leary has made it his mission to bring down one and to try to save the other.
First, we will talk about his mission to get Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into retirement.
“It can’t happen fast enough,” he told me. “Every Canadian should be working on that.”
O’Leary is and has been for years. Perhaps with Trudeau announcing his intention to leave, Mr. Wonderful will get his wish.
“Unfortunately for Trudeau, you have to respect the longevity. He did it without any executional skills. It’s very hard to do but he did it,” O’Leary told Fox News Channel’s The Story with Martha MacCallum. “Everything he touched over that 10-year period turned into (excrement) … He will go down in history as the idiot king.”
And O’Leary told the Toronto Sun he hopes to shine some of that failure on Trudeau’s old friend and insider Gerald Butts.
“He was the idiot jester,” O’Leary said of Butts. “He destroyed the Canadian economy by taking away its ability to capitalize on its resources … I see great opportunity now. The Canadian dollar is now the ‘Trudeau peso’ — it has completely collapsed.”
But with all of Canada’s resources, “I am going to go back in there once (Conservative Leader Pierre) Poilievre gets in and start investing.”
He sees the potential in Canada — just like he does for TikTok.
As the clock ticks down to zero on the life of TikTok in America, as ordered by the U.S. Congress as a result of it being a communist Chinese company that spies on its users, O’Leary has merged his efforts to buy the social media video giant with a competitor to save the platform from being shut for good.
That date is looming. If an American buyer is not found by Jan. 19, TikTok has been ordered to be taken offline in the United States, and it is expected Canada will soon follow.
Part of saving TikTok is to meet the challenge of the U.S. government to change it from its Chinese-written software to approved American algorithms.
And O’Leary, known as Mr. Wonderful on the Shark Tank TV show, believes not only is TikTok worth saving but once the “spyware” is taken off, the platform will help the economies of both America and Canada boom.
“TikTok has immense potential,” said O’Leary. “Not just as a tool for creators and businesses, but as a cornerstone of a more secure, people-centred digital future.”
And he was down to Mar-a-Lago twice over the weekend to present the ideas to President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team.
“I actually had two agendas to talk to his team about,” O’Leary told me.
One was about the TikTok deal and the other was to advance the idea of sitting down with America to avoid a 25% tariff and create an economic union that protects Canadian sovereignty and also helps both countries.
But before it ever gets there, TikTok is going to need some help from President Joe Biden before he leaves office Jan. 20. And then it will need help from Trump “by 12:05 p.m. when he takes office.”
Before Trump takes the oath, Biden “can extend the deadline for 90 days and we need him to do that or TikTok will be shut permanently in America,” O’Leary told the Toronto Sun.
The plan is buy TikTok from Chinese-run ByteDance and revitalize it to meet American security standards.
And this week, O’Leary joined The People’s Bid for TikTok, an effort led by Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt, the billionaire former Los Angeles Dodgers owner.
O’Leary told me this is a perfect fit because he has the connections with thousands of entrepreneurs from the Shark Tank community and McCourt’s group has the technical acumen to not only save TikTok but make it an even bigger network in the future.
“Together with Frank, we aim to deliver an American-owned platform that safeguards national security while empowering its 170 million U.S. users to thrive,” said O’Leary. “With the Jan. 19 deadline quickly approaching, I’m confident that our shared vision, paired with President-elect Trump’s business acumen, will lead to a deal that benefits everyone.”
O’Leary will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court hearing into this on Friday with a view to arguing the merits of saving TikTok from extension.
“We’ve built a clean, American-made tech stack and continue to be the only viable bidder that can offer a seamless transition for everyone on TikTok without the existing algorithm,” said McCourt. “Kevin has been a relentless advocate for new ownership of this platform as he understands the enormous opportunity a sale presents for investors, the millions of creators who rely on the platform for their livelihoods, and everyday Americans who love the platform.”
But the clock is ticking for this to happen. And they are going to need some bipartisan help to make it happen.