BUSINESS/SOCIAL MEDIA: [Reporter: “Are you prepared to sign off on the Oracle and TikTok deal, even though the Treasury isn’t getting paid?”]
“It has to be 100 percent as far as national security is concerned. And, no, I’m not prepared to sign off on anything. I have to see the deal.”
[Reporter: “What about the payment to the Treasury?”]
“Well, we’re going to see about that. Amazingly, I find that you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed to accept — and I said, ‘What kind of a gov- — what kind of a thing is?’ If they’re willing to make big payments to the government, they’re not allowed, because there’s no — there’s no way of doing that from a — there’s no legal path to doing that. And I’m saying, ‘Wait a minute. They’re willing to make a big payment to the government and we’re not allowed to take the money? When does this happen? How foolish can we be?’ So we’re going to — we’re looking into that right now. You understand that.
In other words, I said, ‘No, I want a big chunk of that money to go to the United States government because we made it possible.’ And the lawyers come back to me and they say, ‘Well, there’s no way of doing that.’ You know why? Because nobody has ever heard of that before. Nobody has ever said that before. Nobody has ever said, ‘Well, we’ll approve the deal, but we want a lot of money to go to the government because by approving the deal, we’re making the deal valuable.’ They’ve never heard of that before. Okay? Can you believe that? Right? Hard to believe.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | September 16, 2020,” whitehouse.gov, Sep. 16, 2020