Trump joins TikTok and quickly gets more followers than Biden campaign

Trump's first video has been viewed about 69 million times

Trump quickly racked up millions of followers on TikTok. AFP

Donald Trump by Monday had racked up more than 4.2 million followers on TikTok, the popular platform he once tried to ban, after just two days.

Trump's inaugural TikTok video at the weekend showed him walking into a Mixed Martial Arts event in New Jersey where a crowd of mostly young men gave him a rapturous welcome.

His appearance came just two days after he was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York.

At the event, Trump appeared to tell former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov that he was going to “stop” the war in Palestine, although audio of the brief exchange was not clear.

The video had been watched nearly 69 million times as of Monday afternoon.

Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020 when he was president, but courts blocked the move.

In March, he said the platform was a national security threat but that a ban on it would hurt some young people and only strengthen Facebook, which he has strongly criticised.

President Joe Biden's election campaign is already on TikTok, with more than 340,000 followers, although he has signed a bill that would ban the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, if its Chinese owner ByteDance fails to sell it.

TikTok is suing the US government over the new law.

Mr Biden does not have a personal account on TikTok.

Trump's decision to join the platform could help him to reach younger voters in his third bid for the White House.

He and Mr Biden are in a close race before the November 5 presidential election.

Trump has 87.2 million followers on X, compared to Mr Biden's 38 million, but the former president does most of his social media posting on his own platform, Truth Social.