President Trump said that a substantial portion of TikTok’s operations sale price should go to the Treasury of the United States, ‘because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen.’ The Final Round panel break down the details.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Well, I want to stick with Microsoft's interest in TikTok here and just talk about the government and President Trump's personal involvement in this. We were just talking to [INAUDIBLE] a little bit about that.

But President Trump today making some interesting comments, I think you can say, about this deal, saying that he told Satya Nadella that the US should get a cut of it. Let's take a listen to what he exactly had to say.

DONALD TRUMP: I did say that if you buy it, whatever the price is that goes to whoever owns it-- because I guess it's China, essentially. But more than anything else, I said a very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States because we're making it possible for this deal to happen.

SEANA SMITH: Andy, President Trump saying that a cut of it should go to the Treasury Department because they're making it possible for this deal to happen. I mean, a lot of questions here. Why? Is this legal? Does this make any sense at all? What do you think?

ANDY SERWER: It makes sense to the mind of the president of the United States, Seana. That's all I can give you. No, and then he started going on and-- I mentioned this before, talking about key money like with some New York City real-estate transaction.

I, quite honestly, didn't follow that. I don't know about key money. Maybe Myles remembers or knows, but it was something-- yeah, right? I mean, you could say, listen, this whole thing wouldn't be happening if you hadn't forced it, so I'm not sure where they go with that.

By the way, actually I should mention that there are some people opposed to this in the White House. Peter Navarro is against it, but maybe that doesn't count for so much, and maybe it's kind of predictable.

I don't know if they're going to get a cut. I don't know if they're going to do the whole deal, or I mean the whole company or just part of it. There's a lot of unknowns here, Seana.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, [? that will be ?] interesting. And speaking of Navarro's comments, I think he was basically saying that he didn't know if Microsoft was the right company to buy TikTok given the fact Microsoft is one of those companies that I think he believes said that helped build that China its firewall. So a little bit of concern here coming from Navarro. But again, things change day to day in the White House and especially in the administration, so you can really count on exactly what they're saying at this moment.