Trump may be a star on TikTok but Republicans aren't following his lead

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At the beginning of June, former President Donald Trump went somewhere no Republican political leader had gone before.

“The president is now on TikTok,” declared Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White in a video on the platform. Standing next to him, Trump added, “It’s my honor.”

The post cuts to a series of back-to-back clips where the former president attends a UFC fight and greets supporters, ending with him asking, “That was a good walk on, right?”

It lasts 13 seconds and has more than 166 million views.

In the two months since launching his account, Trump has racked up over 9 million TikTok followers. The decision to join the platform was a departure from his previous policy advocating to ban the app over national security concerns. TikTok is owned by Chinese company Byte Dance.

Still, while Trump has changed his position on the popular social media app and now campaigns to protect it, his Republican colleagues are noticeably absent on the platform. According to an NPR analysis, zero Republican members of the House of Representatives or the Senate have accounts as of July 1. Just a handful of GOP challengers in major down-ballot races do.

It’s a divide within the party that some conservative digital strategists argue needs mending in order for Republicans to keep pace with Democrats and adapt to the changing ways the electorate gets information.

“We can't be picky about where we reach voters, especially as it's getting more and more difficult to reach voters,” explained Eric Wilson, the executive director for the Center for Campaign Innovation and a Republican digital strategist. He argued there are ways to maneuver the security