Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

🎧 Programming note: Make sure to check out the latest episode of my podcast, Somebody’s Gotta Win, where I break down the Senate map with longtime McConnell advisor Josh Holmes, who explains how he was able to thaw the frost between Trump and the leader’s office so they could get on the same page about Senate recruits. On Tuesday, I spoke to Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith about his messaging suggestions for Biden and how chaos around the president is helping Trump. Subscribe here and here.

In tonight’s edition, how TikTok became an unlikely platform for pro-Trump content—and how the Chinese-owned company may be leaning on its growing affinity with MAGA world to solve its political and legal headaches if the White House changes hands.

But first…

• Tim Scott and J.D. Vance hit the gala circuit: Gala and luncheon season carries on in D.C. with just a few weeks until the finale in June. Last night’s dinner for the Japanese ambassador, Shigeo Yamada, featured an eclectic mix of senators from both sides of the aisle at the iconic Andrew Mellon Auditorium: John Cornyn, John Barrasso, Steve Daines, Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons, Tom Cotton, Roger Wicker, and Eric Schmitt. There were also plenty of legacy Washingtonians, like Lucky Roosevelt, Lally Weymouth, Fred Ryan, Barbie Albritton, Rickie Niceta, Mark Ein, Kevin Chaffee, and Walt Cronkite.

  Of course, with Trump V.P. chatter lingering, there was a constant swarm around Tim Scott and J.D. Vance. (Vance’s presence at an event celebrating global partnership was particularly surprising considering his “America First” agenda.) Susan Collins told me she was ready to be a moderating force against a possible Trump administration in case a MAGA cartoon like Marjorie Taylor Greene was nominated for a Senate-confirmable posting. “I just wish there were more of us,” she said wistfully.

• Speaking of galas…: On Tuesday, philanthropists Kristin Rae Cecchi and Charlie Lefkowitz Crowley were honored at 14th Annual Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation Great Ladies Luncheon at The Ritz Carlton by Carolina Herrera’s Wes Gordon.
• D.C. loses an icon: Washington lost one of its ultimate insiders last night: Former Clinton White House counsel and lobbyist Jack Quinn died at 74. Jack and his wife, Susanna, have been a part of the fabric of D.C. society for decades, hosting governors, senators, and congressmen at their home. There is no doubt his memorial service will resemble a state funeral.

• Cuellar’s burden: It seems that two years of F.B.I. investigations have (unsurprisingly) put a serious dent in recently indicted House Democrat Henry Cuellar’s campaign fundraising: The 10-term congressman has spent almost half of all the money he’s raised so far this cycle on legal expenses. He’s so far paid about $750,000 to three law firms: Clifford Chance, Miller & Chevalier, and Perkins Coie.

  Zooming out, Cuellar’s donations to the D.C.C.C. have dropped since the 2020 cycle, when he began facing significant threats in his primary. This term, Cuellar has donated about $53,000 to the D.C.C.C., which put him on track to donate far less than the $500,000 he contributed in 2018—a figure more in line with the party’s expectations for his status as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. When Republicans try to challenge Cuellar in his district this fall, he will head into that campaign with just $415,000.

• MAGA largesse: An interesting longtime PAC called Freedom First, which is associated with former House Republican and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, has remained active amid his legal issues. In fact, the PAC has made donations to dozens of House Republicans who are either confirmed or likely members of the House Freedom Caucus, along with a handful of candidates who’ve captured G.O.P. nominations in safe Republican districts. Member recipients include: Dan Bishop, Lauren Boebert, Josh Brecheen, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Warren Davidson, Chuck Edwards, Bob Good, Harriet Hageman, Dusty Johnson, Alex Mooney, Barry Moore, Andy Ogles, Anna Paulina Luna, Ralph Norman, Matt Rosendale, Chip Roy, and Keith Self.

  Also on the Freedom First disbursements sheet: The PAC paid out $7,500 in “PAC expenses” to Cleta Mitchell, one of the attorneys leading the charge on Trump’s 2020 disproven election fraud allegations. Headed into the rest of the election year, Freedom First’s cash on hand has dwindled to about $265,000, and it’s rare that a former member is able to raise fresh money for leadership PACs (especially one under indictment).

Meanwhile, perhaps surprisingly, the app has become a bastion of MAGA short-form video discourse. Since November, according to two TikTok officials, there’s been twice as much pro-Trump content as pro-Biden content on the platform—specifically, 1.29 million positive Trump videos or images, with 9.1 billion views, compared to 651,000 positive Biden posts, with 6.15 billion views, they told me. According to an internal TikTok analysis, from January 2023 into May 2024, videos tagged #Trump2024 have generated 472.8 million likes and 6.5 billion views, compared with 50.9 million likes and 558 million views for videos tagged #Biden2024. This may not be the most precise survey of the landscape, but that’s still a nearly 10 to 1 ratio of Trump likes to Biden likes, and 12 to 1 in views.

Likewise, conservatives like Charlie Kirk (1.1 million followers), former Trump aide Johnny McEntee (2.3 million), Ben Shapiro (2.5 million), and Tucker Carlson (1.3 million) have largely co-opted the app, outgunning top liberal TikTok creators such as A.O.C. (988,000 followers) and David Pakman (925,000 followers). By comparison, Biden’s TikTok, @bidenhq, which launched on Super Bowl Sunday, has 316,000 followers, 100,000 of whom signed up in one day. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose TikTok has 1.2 million followers, tweeted against the ban last month, adding, “Congress and the administration don’t understand that TikTok is an entrepreneurial platform for thousands of American young people. They want to screw them over just so they can pretend to be tough on China.”

Perhaps sensing an opportunity, Trump is said to be considering joining TikTok himself, according to a Washington Post report over the weekend. I’m told by a source involved that they are in very early conversations. On Wednesday, the Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. launched a TikTok handle, @maga. “Biden is sucking wind,” said a source involved in the pro-TikTok effort. “Look at every comment on Biden’s TikTok: ‘Don't ban TikTok, save TikTok.’ They’re getting significant blowback from creators, while Trump’s team is lying in the grass. A whole generation of kids are voting for the first time in November, and Trump is making a naked play for their votes.”

On Tuesday, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to block the law on First Amendment grounds and emphasizing the unlikelihood of a sale of the app’s U.S. operations to an American company, especially given China’s refusal to include the algorithm in any deal. The litigation will likely end up before the Supreme Court. Until then, Democrats and Republicans are determined to exploit TikTok’s deep reach into the youth demo. After Biden signed the ban into law last month, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.”

Billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass has also been courting Trump directly. Yass, a former “never-Trumper” who owns 15 percent of ByteDance through his Susquehanna investment firm, has billions riding on TikTok’s eventual fate. A spokesperson for Yass told the Times in March that he hasn’t donated to the former president, but Trump’s volte-face on the app serendipitously took place right after a March meeting with the investor.

Trump, who is lagging behind Biden in fundraising, surely could use a cash infusion from Yass. Another major Republican donor who he’s been playing footsie with is Larry Ellison, whose company Oracle stores TikTok’s data.

Leaving aside the anti-Big Tech Republicans like Josh Hawley and the true national security hawks like Tom Cotton, it seems that many Republicans may have never really wanted to kill off the app. According to a source with knowledge of the legislative negotiations, senior Republican senators and leading Democrats made it clear that they wanted to ensure the ongoing viability of the app in both the tech and macroeconomic ecosystem. After all, TikTok may be owned by a Chinese company, but it employs thousands of people in the U.S. As such, the Senate extended the House’s six-month divestment window to nine months, and added the option for the president to extend the deadline by 90 days. “Everyone involved in this has made it clear that they don’t want a disruption in service, especially ahead of the election,” the source told me.

They also probably want to avoid any political unforced errors. Take freshman Democratic congressman Jeff Jackson, who has a surprisingly large TikTok following of 2.2 million. He lost 300,000 followers within 24 hours of posting an explanation about why he voted with the majority of the House in favor of the ban. He ended up posting a separate apology from his kitchen.

With 60 percent of U.S. adults under 30 using TikTok, according to Pew research, both parties are loath to discount the app’s influence—especially in an election that will be determined by a few hundred thousand voters in a handful of battleground states. There are 10.5 million TikTok users in Pennsylvania, 3.4 million in Nevada, 2.4 million in Arizona, 5.4 million in Georgia, and 3.7 million users in Michigan. If just 1 percent of these users are fed more pro-Trump or anti-Biden content by TikTok creators who are miffed over the ban, it could have a serious impact on the election.

Even just having fewer advocates on the app could have implications. This insight explains why the White House has taken TikTok creators very seriously, offering some of them briefings with officials as senior as Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. Creators are also given a phone number they can call and text with questions and interview requests.

V Spehar (@underthedesknews), a nonbinary news influencer who has more than 3.3 million TikTok followers, has been invited to the White House five times for briefings on policy, including one on the State of the Union. Spehar told me the reason Biden’s team is failing to keep up with conservative creators like Kirk and McEntee is because they don’t understand how to connect with Gen Z voters. “Where the campaign falls short is that they think TikTok is like Instagram, and that Dark Brandon will win him the election,” Spehar said. “We’ve moved on from the meme-ification of the news. That’s very millennial. I don’t think Gen Z moves through news memes the way millennials did.”

One takeaway from the TikTok survival campaign is that neither party seems anywhere close to reaching, or even understanding, the country’s new young voters. Compared with millennials, Spehar noted, Gen Zers are more empathy-driven, and as such, they see the ban as a personal attack on their favorite creators. When Biden signed the ban, Spehar said, several of their followers reached out and said, “‘What happened? I thought he loved you.’ They’re worried that President Biden hurt my feelings, that he stifled me, and that they won’t be able to find me anymore.”