By Gram Slattery

Dec 22 (Reuters) - President-elect Donald Trump

indicated on Sunday that he favored allowing TikTok to keep

operating in the United States for at least a little while,

saying he had received billions of views on the social media

platform during his presidential campaign.

Trump's comments before a crowd of conservative supporters

in Phoenix, Arizona, were one of the strongest signals yet that

he opposes a potential exit of TikTok from the U.S. market.

The U.S. Senate passed a law in April requiring TikTok's

Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest the app, citing

national security concerns.

TikTok's owners have sought to have the law struck down, and

the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. But if the

court does not rule in ByteDance's favor and no divestment

occurs, the app could be effectively banned in the United States

on Jan. 19, one day before Trump takes office.

It is unclear how Trump would go about undoing the TikTok

divestiture order, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate.

"I think we're going to have to start thinking because, you

know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with

billions of views, billions and billions of views," Trump told

the crowd at AmericaFest, an annual gathering organized by

conservative group Turning Point.

"They brought me a chart, and it was a record, and it was so

beautiful to see, and as I looked at it, I said, 'Maybe we gotta

keep this sucker around for a little while'," he said.

Trump met with TikTok's CEO on Monday. Trump said at a news

conference the same day that he had a "warm spot" for TikTok

thanks to his campaign's success on the app.

The Justice Department has argued that Chinese control of

TikTok poses a continuing threat to national security, a

position supported by most U.S. lawmakers.

TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social

media app's ties to China, arguing that its content

recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United

States on cloud servers operated by Oracle Corp ( ORCL ), while

content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in

the United States.