By AAMER MADHANI WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon has put in a bid to purchase TikTok, a Trump administration official said Wednesday, in an eleventh-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condit ion of anonymity, said the Amazon offer was made in a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The New York Times first reported on the bid. President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day gave the platform a reprieve, barreling past a law that had been upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which said the ban was necessary for national security. Under the law, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance is required to sell the platform to an approved buyer or take it offline in the United States. Trump has suggested he could further extend the pause on the ban, but he has also said he expects a deal to be forged by Saturday. Amazon declined to comment. Related Articles Wall Street swings in final hours of trading before Trump’s tariff announcement Tesla sales tumble 13% as Musk backlash, competition and aging lineup turn off buyers Trump is set to announce new tariffs as he takes a political and financial gamble Why no one is challenging Trump’s executive order that keeps TikTok running Automakers report stellar sales ahead of Trump’s tariffs taking effect The existence of an Amazon bid surfaced as Trump was scheduled on Wednesday to meet with senior officials to discuss the coming deadline for a TikTok sale. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government. TikTok said it has never done that and would not do so if asked. The U.S. government has not provided evidence of that happening. Trump has millions of followers on TikTok and has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. During his first term, he took a more skeptical view of TikTok and issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance as well as the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat. ...read more read less