• Trump credits TikTok for his re-election last year.
• Platform has 170m users in Untied States alone.
• Biden-era law requires transfer of TikTok’s assets.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday that declares a deal being negotiated by the White House to sell TikTok’s US operations will meet requirements set out in a 2024 law, a White House source with knowledge of the matter said.

Earlier this week, the White House said Trump will declare that a deal to divest TikTok’s US operations from its Chinese owner ByteDance will meet requirements set out in a law passed by Congress that bans the short video app unless its Chinese owner is ended.

Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million US users, with helping him win re-election last year and has 15 million followers on his personal account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.

Trump has delayed enforcement of the law through mid-December amid efforts to extract TikTok’s US assets from the global platform, line up American investors and ensure that the new ownership qualifies as a full divestiture needed under the 2024 law — passed by the Biden administration requiring TikTok’s divestiture over fears that its US user data could be accessed by the Chinese government.

A further extension is expected in the executive order on Thursday (today).

Last week, the US president had said that business leaders Lachlan Murdoch, Larry Ellison and Michael Dell would be involved as US investors in a proposed deal to keep TikTok operating in the country.

Trump had earlier said the US and China have made progress on a deal requiring TikTok’s American assets to be transferred to US owners from China’s ByteDance.

• US-Pakistan ties have warmed under Trump.
• Trump has already hosted Field Marshal Asim Munir.
• US ties with India have been tested since Trump took office.

US President Donald Trump is expected to meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the White House on Thursday, a Trump administration official told Reuters on Wednesday, with the meeting coming weeks after the two countries agreed to a trade deal.

The prime minister and the US president are expected to hold detailed talks on global and regional issues, with Field Marshal Asim Munir also likely to join the meeting.

US-Pakistan ties have warmed in recent months under Trump after Washington had for years viewed Pakistan’s rival India as a counter to China’s influence in Asia.

Washington’s relations with New Delhi have been tested under the Republican leader over issues such as visa hurdles for Indians, high tariff rates imposed by Trump on goods from India and Trump’s repeated claims that he brokered an India-Pakistan ceasefire in May after the South Asian neighbours engaged in their latest hostilities.

The United States and Pakistan announced a trade deal on July 31 with a 19% tariff rate imposed by Washington. Trump has yet to reach a trade deal with India.

Officials and analysts have noted that after tensions with Washington, New Delhi is recalibrating relations with China as a hedge.

Trump welcomed army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir earlier this year, the first time a US president hosted the head of Pakistan’s army – widely regarded as the most powerful figure in the country – at the White House, unaccompanied by senior Pakistani civilian officials.

“We’re working through a number of issues when it comes to counter-terrorism, when it comes to economic and trade ties,” a senior State Department official told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday when asked about Pakistan.

“And so the president remains focused on advancing US interests in the region, that includes through engaging with Pakistan and their government leaders,” the official said.

When asked about frictions with India, the official said Trump believed in being frank about frustrations in ties, but the relationship was strong. Washington viewed New Delhi as a good friend and partner and believed their relationship would define the 21st century, the official said.

They added that Washington had been working on planning for a summit of the Quad grouping of India, Australia, Japan and the United States that India had been expected to hold in November. That would happen, “if not this year, early next year,” the official said.

Pakistan has backed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in de-escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, although Islamabad has condemned US ally Israel’s bombardments in Gaza, Qatar and Iran.

Shehbaz was part of a meeting Trump had on Tuesday with leaders of many Muslim-majority countries, where the US president discussed Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Washington says the US shared peace proposals with leaders from those countries in the meeting held on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly.

The much-anticipated episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following the comedian’s return from his suspension drew a broadcast audience about four times larger than average, according to Nielsen ratings data. This was despite the late-night show being preempted by about a quarter of all ABC affiliate TV stations in the U.S. 

Tuesday’s show drew an estimated 6.26 million total broadcast viewers, Disney said in a news release Wednesday, per numbers compiled by Nielsen, an audience measurement firm. The data does not include those who watched the episode on streaming platforms.

For comparison, according to numbers provided to CBS News by a Disney spokesperson, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.42 million broadcast viewers during its 2024-25 season — less than a quarter of what it saw on Tuesday night.

Tuesday’s broadcast also drew a 0.87 rating in the coveted demographic of adults ages 18 to 49, Disney said, the highest for a single episode of Kimmel’s show since March 2015. The show averaged a 0.13 rating for that age group last season, Disney said.

Kimmel’s monologue also drew more than 26 million views on YouTube and other social platforms, according to Disney, which owns ABC. In it, he showed a video clip of President Trump criticizing the show, saying it “had no ratings.”

The host responded: “Well, I do tonight.”

The late-night show was temporarily preempted last week following comments Kimmel made during a Sept. 15 monologue regarding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said at the time.

In a Sept. 17 interview, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s remarks “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and said there was a “path forward for suspension over this.” Within hours of Carr’s comments, two major station owners, Nexstar and Sinclair, announced they were preempting Kimmel’s show indefinitely from their affiliates, while ABC also announced that it was “indefinitely” suspending the show.

Nexstar has a deal pending to purchase fellow station operator Tegna for $6.2 billion, and needs the FCC’s approval for it to go through.  

While ABC announced Monday that it had made the decision to bring Kimmel back to the airwaves, both Nexstar and Sinclair said this week that the show will continue to be preempted indefinitely.

Nexstar said it is “continuing to evaluate the status” of the show. It operates 33 ABC affiliates, while Sinclair runs 38 ABC stations. According to Disney, the two media companies account for ABC stations in about 23% of the U.S. market, including in large cities such as Nashville and Seattle.

In his monologue Tuesday, while he did not issue a blanket apology over his comments, Kimmel said that “it’s important to me as a human, and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man. I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”

In a Sept. 17 Truth Social post following Kimmel’s suspension, Mr. Trump — who has railed against late-night hosts for years going back to his first administration, and has specifically criticized their ratings — wrote on Truth Social that “[t]he ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED.”

Before the show aired Tuesday, Mr. Trump again took to social media to write that “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!”

Aimee Picchi

contributed to this report.