Twitter says it will hand control of US president's official account to Joe Biden on January 20 - regardless of whether Donald Trump has left the White House
Twitter will hand control of the US president's official account to Joe Biden on January 20 regardless of whether Donald Trump has left the White House, it has been revealed.
President Donald Trump has yet to concede the White House to President-elect Joe Biden, but the POTUS Twitter account will be handed to Biden anyway, according to Twitter.
'Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021,' Twitter spokesperson Nick Pacilio told Politico.
President Donald Trump (pictured on August 8) has yet to concede the White House to President-elect Joe Biden, but the POTUS Twitter account will be handed to Biden anyway, according to Twitter
Trump has tweeted 10,900 times since taking over the POTUS account in January 2017, but all his posts will be archived and an account tallying zero Tweets will pass to Biden on January 20.
Twitter said there would be no need to share information between the outgoing and incoming presidency teams.
But it is likely to have little difference to Trump, who boasts more than double the number of followers on his personal account @realDonaldTrump.
POTUS has 32.8million followers, while realDonaldTrump, set up in 2009, has 88.9million.
But as soon as the presidency is handed over to Biden, Trump will lose the protection under Twitter's 'world leaders' policy - which allowed tweets that broke the rules to remain up with a warning.
As soon as the presidency is handed over to Biden (pictured on November 16), Trump will lose the protection under Twitter's 'world leaders' policy - which allowed tweets that broke the rules to remain up with a warning
POTUS has 32.8million followers, while realDonaldTrump, set up in 2009, has 88.9million. Pictured, the Twitter logo at the New York Stock Exchange
Other accounts to be moved on to the next administration include @WhiteHouse, @VP and @FLOTUS. First Lady Melania Trump has only tweeted 1,297 times in the last four years while Vice President Mike Pence posted 9,294 times.
When President Barack Obama left the White House in 2017 the administration's Twitter accounts were archived and left to the management of the National Archives and Records Administration. Obama's tweets are now held under the handle @POTUS44.
A @POTUS45 account has already been set up, presumably as a placeholder for Trump's official tweets as president.
Yesterday, Trump returned to the White House briefing room for the first time since the elections – and once again claimed he 'won' despite trailing Biden by millions of votes.
President Donald Trump looked worn out as he spoke on lowering prescription drug prices on November 20, 2020, in the Brady Briefing Room
Looking worn out, the president blasted Pfizer and 'Big Pharma' – although he misstated the name of the company, calling it 'FISA,' for announcing the dramatic vaccine breakthrough after the election.
'Big pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertise onments against me during the campaign – which I won, by the way, but you know, we'll find that out. Almost 74 million votes,' Trump said.
As of last count, President-elect Joe Biden got nearly 80 million votes – more than Trump.
'We had big pharma against us. We had the media against us. We had big tech against us. We had dishonesty against us,' Trump fumed.
The president also accused drug companies of holding out until after the election, without providing evidence of why it did so.
'So they waited and waited and waited and they thought they'd come out of it a few days after the election. And it would have probably had an impact. Who knows probably it wouldn't have,' he said.
'Sure the Democrats would have found the ballots someplace,' he theorized – alluding to his claims of a 'rigged' election.
'These corrupt games will not deter us from doing what is right for the American people,' Trump said.