Trump to lose @POTUS Twitter account on Inauguration Day 2021
As of today, Donald Trump still has not conceded the 2020 presidential election win to President-elect Joe Biden – although at last count Biden was up by 6,034,954 popular votes and 74 (projected) electoral college votes. But, Twitter seems to have endorsed Biden as the next President. Yesterday, the social media giant announced that it will turn over control of their official presidential Twitter account to the 46th president, Joe Biden.
According to Twitter, Biden will receive control of the @POTUS account on Inauguration Day, 2021.
Nick Pacilio, Communications Spokesperson for Twitter, informed the media that the transfer of presidential Twitter accounts, “will also apply to about a dozen White House accounts, including the @FLOTUS and @PressSec accounts.”
“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021. As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration,” Pacilio said in a statement.
In addition to the @POTUS account changing hands, so too will Twitter accounts @FLOTUS, @VP, @PressSec – as well as a slew of additional accounts reserved for the White House.
Although not 100% certain yet, Trump’s former presidential tweets should be preserved for history and ad infinitum at the soon to be created account @POTUS45. Ace News Today is making that call only because we know that Barack Obama’s archived presidential tweets can be found over at @POTUS44.
As far as we know, Trump will retain his personal “Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump” Twitter account, even though most of his recent Tweets and re-Tweets have been tagged with the warning and disclaimer “This claim about election fraud has been disputed.” For example:
On January 21 when the handover of presidential Twitter accounts get transferred over to the Biden-Harris administration, the existing tweets for @POTUS, @FLOTUS, @VP and the other official accounts will all be reset to zero tweets.
After January 20, we shouldn’t be seeing the sheer number of tweets from the new President that we’re currently used to seeing.
Biden, for his part, is a far more sedate Twitter user. He has sent less than 7,000 tweets to his 19 million followers, compared to Trump’s 58,000. ~ International Business Times
Currently, the @POTUS account has 32.8 million followers. Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account has 88.9 million followers.
It’s no secret that under the Trump presidency, the @POTUS account simply served as a reservoir for re-tweets from his personal Twitter account. And both of those accounts were used to – often times without warning – announce Trump’s new policies, hirings and / or firings.
Biden is on record as saying that he won’t be setting policy by tweet.
(Cover photo, ‘Trump Lashes Out on Twitter,’ Image credit: CNBC / YouTube Video Snip)
~ Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Connect with Richard on Facebook and Twitter
