The alt-right are celebrating Donald Trump’s response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, which erupted in deadly violence over the weekend. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke tweeted his approval on Tuesday, writing “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth.” Trump blamed “both sides” for violence, even going so far as to ask “What about the ‘alt-left’?” Barack Obama’s response was very different.
Writing on Twitter soon after news of the violence broke, Obama shared a quote from Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion,” the former President wrote in the first of three tweets, accompanied by a picture of him beaming at four young children. “People must learn to hate,” he continued, “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 initial tweet has become the most popular in the platform’s history, Twitter confirmed yesterday. The message has been liked 4 million times since Monday evening. In total, the trio of tweets has over 7 million likes. In contrast, Trump’s twitter response to the Charlottesville violence received just 192,000 likes.
The second most popular tweet in the platform’s history is Ariana Grande’s message to fans following the Manchester bombing, with 2.7 million likes. And, while this isn’t a popularity contest, we’d like to note both Ariana Grande and Barack Obama both have tens of millions more followers than Trump too.