What did Donald Trump do today?

He found another thing that will happen in "two weeks."

In an interview with Fox Business that aired this morning, Trump claimed that he had found a buyer for TikTok, the social media app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It has been living on borrowed time, legally, after a law passed last year banning its use in the United States unless it was divested of Chinese ownership, due to security concerns.

Trump was the one who started the ball rolling on a TikTok ban, during his first term, issuing orders in 2020 in an attempt to force its divestment. He was motivated by the forthcoming launch of his own competing social media site, and the fact that much of the content on the youth-oriented site was not particularly flattering to him.  But once Congress began to move on passing a more legally sound bill to accomplish the ban—something that was deeply unpopular with young voters in an election year—Trump abruptly changed his tune, declaring "I like TikTok" and criticizing President Biden for signing the same law that Trump had campaigned for.

That law allows for the president to temporarily suspend the ban once and only once, for 90 days, which Trump did immediately on taking office. When that reprieve expired, he ordered another suspension, and then a third, which he has no legal authority to do. 

Trump was extremely vague on the details of the news he was breaking, saying only that "a group of very wealthy people" were interested in buying it, and that he would say more "in two weeks." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's a verbal tic Trump has come to rely heavily on to escape having to explain himself in the moment. He said earlier this month that he'd make a decision on the Iran-Israel conflict in two weeks (before launching a bombing mission a few days later that he had already ordered plans for). He used it to dodge a question in May about whether Vladimir Putin was trustworthy: Trump, who has been deeply enmeshed in the Russian president's circle for decades, wouldn't say on the day, but promised to have an opinion in two weeks. (It wasn't even the first time he'd needed a two-week reprieve where questions about where Putin were concerned.) As reporter Shawn McCreesh put it:

Tax plans, health care policies, evidence of conspiracy theories he claimed were true, the fight against ISIS, the opening of some coal mines, infrastructure plans — all were at one point or another riddles he promised to solve for the public in about two weeks.

It is a slippery thing, this two weeks — not a measurement of time so much as a placeholder. Two weeks for Mr. Trump can mean something, or nothing at all. It is both a yes and a no. It is delaying while at the same time scheduling. It is not an objective unit of time, it is a subjective unit of time. It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later. But later can also mean never. Sometimes. 

Of course, it's entirely possible that there is a buyer for TikTok, which is in legal limbo until Trump decides otherwise and appears to be censoring itself accordingly. 

It's not clear if the interviewer, Maria Bartiromo, followed up on the question, because the interview was taped and clearly edited, cutting off Trump's rambling train of thought in places. This is neither unusual nor inherently inappropriate, but Trump is currently suing the parent company of CBS for $20 billion dollars of "mental anguish" because 60 Minutes aired an edited version of an interview with Vice-President Kamala Harris during the campaign.

Why does this matter?

• In an actual democracy, presidents don't get to ignore the parts of laws they think are inconvenient.

• When people actually know what they're talking about, they don't generally wait two weeks to tell you about it.