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Obama’s response to Charlottesville violence becomes Twitter’s most popular

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Washington: Unlike some former presidents, Barack Obama is showing no signs of completely abandoning public life.

Since leaving office, Obama has commented on major events or controversies, including the terrorist attack in Manchester, England, and Senator John McCain's brain cancer diagnosis. He did so again on Saturday, after the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Moment car ploughs into Charlottesville protest

NO SOUND: Newly released drone footage shows the moment a car plows into a crowd of people protesting a white nationalist rally in Virginia, killing one person.

"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," Obama said, quoting the late South African president Nelson Mandela in tweets.

The first tweet, which shows a picture of Obama smiling at four children, had been retweeted more than 1.1 million times and liked 2.8 million times as of Wednesday afternoon.

In a post, the social network said the tweet was the most-liked in Twitter's history, ahead of singer Ariana Grande's post following the Manchester terrorist attack in May, and a photo by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars in 2014.

According to Favstar, a Twitter-tracking site, it also ranks No. 7 among the most retweeted tweets.

Obama has used Twitter only sporadically since January, tweeting a handful of times every month to weigh in on national conversations. It's unclear if Obama himself or a social media team is handling his Twitter handle.

President Donald Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville has become the subject of widespread criticisms.

In a statement on Saturday, he condemned hatred and bigotry from "many sides", not saying which "sides" he was referring to, or whose hatred and bigotry he was condemning.

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Many Democrats and some Republicans took issue with Trump for not calling out white nationalists or white supremacists, even after a car, allegedly driven by a neo-Nazi sympathiser, ploughed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others.

On Monday, after two days of criticisms, Trump finally explicitly condemned hate groups, "including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists".

But on Tuesday, Trump defended his earlier statement in a highly combative news conference.

"Before I make a statement, I like to know the facts," Trump told reporters, also reiterating his belief that both sides were to blame for the violence.

Obama did not comment on the White House's statements on Charlottesville and has largely avoided criticising his successor.

In June, however, he weighed in on two of the current administration's major policy items: climate change and healthcare.

He criticised the Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Trump, who has labelled climate change a "hoax", had promised to "cancel" the climate deal and Obama-era regulations that he said were killing jobs and industries. Obama issued a statement in early June that not-so-subtlety called the administration's policies on climate change antiquated.

"The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack," Obama said.

"But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got."

On June 22, the Senate released a draft of a healthcare bill that would roll back much of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Obama wrote a lengthy Facebook post in response.

"I recognise that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what's really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did," Obama wrote.

He said that the Senate bill, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, was "not a healthcare bill" - but a "massive transfer of wealth" from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.

Washington Post

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