In 2020, the Trump-linked billionaire with a stake in TikTok’s fate was Larry Ellison, co-founder of software company Oracle and the host of a lavish fundraiser for Trump’s reelection effort in February 2020. Oracle CEO Safra Catz also donated $125,000 to the Trump Victory committee later that year. Under tremendous pressure from the Trump administration — and after Trump’s efforts to ban the app or force a sale fizzled out — TikTok ultimately tapped Oracle to serve as its primary cloud provider in the United States.

Today that billionaire is Jeffrey Yass, a major donor to the conservative Club for Growth as the group cozies up to Trump ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign. Yass holds a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, and Club for Growth has tapped former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to push back on Washington’s plan to restrict the app.

Both then and now, Wexler said, Trump’s stance on TikTok has been “entirely transactional” — the former president seeming to support whatever policy will best serve his billionaire backers.

Given Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and the strong possibility that he’ll retake the White House in November, Trump’s inconsistency on TikTok could have a major impact on how Washington addresses the security concerns raised by the popular video app’s Chinese ownership.

House Republicans appeared to buck Trump’s pressure on Wednesday, with most voting in favor of a bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban, but Trump’s reversal could still have an impact in the Senate. And it may be a significant factor in how a new Trump administration approaches TikTok.

Trump’s 2020 attempt to ban TikTok via executive order — an abortive effort that ultimately led to Oracle’s partnership with TikTok — is widely credited in Washington as the impetus for today’s bipartisan push to restrict the app.

So it was bewildering to many when the House’s abrupt effort to rein in TikTok caused Trump to rush to its defense. In a Truth Social post last Thursday, the former president warned that a ban would benefit Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, a social media company that he believes is biased against him. Trump reiterated his worries about a TikTok ban in a CNBC interview earlier this week, though he also acknowledged that the Chinese-owned app raises security concerns.

Many congressional Democrats took the opportunity to attack Trump’s TikTok about-face as driven in part by Yass, a billionaire whose support would be a major boon for his burgeoning presidential campaign.

“He figures there’s more money on TikTok’s side for him than there would be in opposing it,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters on Tuesday. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) struck a similar tone. “When it comes to Donald Trump, follow the money,” she told POLITICO on Tuesday.

Elected Republicans wouldn’t go quite as far. But most declined to defend Trump’s TikTok stance, and few would rule out the notion that he’s acting on Yass’s behalf.

“You’d have to take that up with President Trump. I can’t speak to his motivation,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told POLITICO this week. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) — one of the few Republicans who has declined to endorse Trump in 2024 — told reporters that “people can draw their own conclusions” about why Trump flipped on TikTok.

A representative for Yass declined to comment on the record.

In this week’s CNBC interview, Trump denied ever speaking to Yass about TikTok. Reached for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung did not respond to questions regarding the influence of Ellison or Yass in Trump’s TikTok decision making. “President Trump made clear in his CNBC interview this week that he viewed Chinese ownership of TikTok as a national security threat, while at the same time appreciating it is an app used and liked by millions of Americans,” said Cheung. He added that Trump “believes Congress must take action to protect the security and privacy of American users on all social media platforms.”

Oracle spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

Conservative supporters of the House TikTok bill downplayed the idea that Trump is advocating aggressively on the company’s behalf.

“If I’m Jeffrey Yass … I’m actually a little annoyed that it was just one confusing tweet and then a really nuanced answer on [CNBC],” said Nathan Leamer, head of Fixed Gear Strategies and a former Republican staffer at the Federal Communications Commission. “I don’t think it gives his team the direction they would want in order to really get people to oppose this.”

Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund and a former tech and national security official in the Biden administration, said it’s difficult to say with certainty whether Trump’s reversal on a TikTok ban — or his general stance on the app over the years — is informed by his relationship with one or two billionaires. But she wouldn’t be surprised.

“The autocratic playbook — we know that Trump admires autocrats and strongmen — the autocratic playbook is to enrich cronies, and to make policies in support of cronies,” Gorman said.

Gorman said that worldview could color Trump’s approach to Chinese tech in a new presidential term — potentially endangering U.S. national security and undermining efforts to convince allies to dump risky Chinese technologies.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s a significant moral center driving Trump’s China policies,” said Gorman.