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Social media erupts over Trump inauguration, TikTok ban and Gaza ceasefire

Donald Trump became president number 47 on Monday, garnering widespread reactions online
US President Donald Trump gestures during his inauguration ceremony in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, on 20 January 2025 (Shawn Thew/AFP)

After overcoming a series of criminal indictments and assassination attempts, Donald Trump won another term in the White House and arrived at the US Capitol to be sworn in as the 47th president.

His inauguration on Monday, which was also Martin Luther King Day, came at an inflection point for both the US and the Middle East.

Israel and the Palestinian movement, Hamas, on 15 January agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, potentially bringing an end to Israel's devastating 15-month onslaught. The ceasefire went into effect on Sunday, a day before the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Before his inauguration, Trump quickly insisted that his team secured the agreement, not the Biden administration. 

Trump had previously warned that there would be “hell to pay” if a deal to secure the release of all the Israeli captives held by armed groups in Gaza was not sealed by his inauguration. 

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After his inauguration, many people have been talking about the ceasefire deal in Gaza and what could be done to help the families of the more than 47,000 people killed and nearly two million displaced. 

On Sunday, the activist group Code Pink gathered at Union Station in New York City to relay their demands for the total liberation of Palestine on the eve of Trump’s inauguration.

Many people on social media also looked back at how Trump previously warned there would be “hell to pay” if a deal to secure the release of all the Israeli captives held by armed groups in Gaza was not sealed by his inauguration.

While some social media users are celebrating how Trump has “stopped the bloodshed in Palestine”, some are frustrated that there has been no recent comment by him or his administration about the “destruction of Gaza” during his inauguration address.

Just before the inauguration, another video that went viral about Trump’s incoming presidency came from Dave Chapelle’s Saturday Night Live monologue, where he addressed Trump and told him to “do better” next time for all Americans, and have empathy for all displaced people “whether they're in the Palisades or Palestine," referring to the Los Angeles fires that displaced over 180,000 people over the past few weeks. 

Chapelle received widespread praise on social media for his support for the displaced people in Palestine and for asking Trump to do more about it. 

TikTok ban 

Just ahead of the inauguration, social media giant TikTok, which briefly went dark in the US on Saturday, was at the Supreme Court, where it was denied a bid by its Chinese owner to overturn a law banning it. 

On Sunday morning, a day before the inauguration, Trump vowed to issue an executive order on Monday to give the app’s parent company, ByteDance, more time to find a buyer.

On Sunday afternoon, TikTok announced it was “in the process of restoring service” to the app and thanked Trump for his support.

But skeptics pointed out that it was initially Trump who wanted to ban the platform in the US back in 2020, and many users on social media echoed that point, while some suggested it was still a big “win” for Trump while hinting at malpractice by the Democratic administration. 

Many on social media argue the ban was in part due to growing support on the platform for Palestine, where there was an outpouring of pro-Palestinian sentiment from young people while Israel’s war on Gaza was killing and displacing Palestinians.

Some people said that the Biden administration “let Trump do a brand deal” with TikTok because they wanted Israel’s war on Gaza to continue uncensored. 

On the other hand, some on TikTok argued that even though the platform has been restored in the US for now, some users are having their posts on the platform removed for “criticizing Trump or saying free Palestine”.

Many critics warned that banning the popular social media app in the US, which some 170 million people are using and which has brought in $24bn to the US economy in 2023, would be an assault on free speech.

According to many commentators, some Republican lawmakers have wanted to squash pro-Palestinian sentiments by banning TikTok in the US. 

In an opinion article published in January 2023, Congressman Mike Gallagher argued that the Chinese Communist Party was using TikTok to push anti-Israeli propaganda.

In addition, Republican Senator Joshua Hawley sent a letter to the Biden administration in November 2023, calling for the ban of TikTok. In the letter, he specifically cited the "ubiquity of anti-Israel content on TikTok" as one of his main reasons for advocating for the ban.

Trump’s inauguration coincided with a ceasefire in Gaza and the short-lived ban on TikTok in the US, which paved the way for more detailed discussions as to what the US public might expect from the president’s second term. 

Even with the current ceasefire deal and the release of Israeli hostages as well as the Palestinian prisoners as part of the first phase of the deal, Trump’s return to the White House has already set high expectations in Israel.

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