WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump plans to take executive actions on border security, energy, and ending policies aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, his incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“We’re going to have his campaign promises that he promised to the American people right out there on the table, in terms of border, in terms of energy, in terms of taking on this kind of DEI, you know, woke culture that has infected so many parts of our federal government,” Waltz said.
Waltz emphasized border issues as most pressing and said American voters gave Trump a clear mandate on that: “Lock down our border, deport the worst of the worst. Take on the cartels.”
Regarding TikTok, Mike Waltz stated that Trump would not rule out continued Chinese ownership of the app, provided measures were taken to ensure the protection and storage of American users’ data within the U.S.
TikTok stopped working for its 170 American users on Sunday after a law took effect banning the app’s continued operation over concerns about national security.
Trump has said he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from a ban after he takes office on Monday, a promise TikTok cited in a notice posted to users on the app.
Waltz also spoke to CBS News on Sunday and said Trump needed time to sort out issues related to TikTok while adding that an extension was needed for TikTok to evaluate proposed buyers.
However, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson sent contradictory signals, saying that he believed Trump would push for TikTok parent ByteDance to sell the app.
Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress have opposed the idea of the extension for TikTok.
Republican U.S. Senators Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Pete Ricketts said in a joint statement on Sunday that “there’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its (ban’s) effective date.”
