Obama’s response most-liked tweet in history
A POST by Barack Obama responding to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville has become the most-liked tweet in history.
Just days after the former US president condemned the tragic events in Virginia with a powerful Nelson Mandela quote, his tweet has gained more than three million likes to set a new record, according to Twitter tracking site Favstar.
Mr Obama’s series of three tweets reads: “No-one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
The first tweet amassed over 1.2 million retweets, while Obama’s follow-up second and third posts garnered more than 300,000 retweets each.
Obama’s tweet came shortly after Donald Trump’s press conference in which the current US President failed to explicitly denounce white supremacists, instead saying: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
Trump’s tweets expressing condolences to friends and families of those who were injured and died in the violent clashes prompted much less social interaction on Twitter than Mr Obama’s – just over 20,000 retweets and 100,000 likes each.
Yesterday, Obama’s post surpassed Ariana Grande’s tweet on May 22 following the Manchester terror attack, which read: “Broken. From the bottom of my heart, I am so so sorry. I don’t have words”. It attracted 2.71 million likes.
US television host Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscars selfie from 2014 is the third most-liked tweet of all time with 2.42 million likes.