Obama Tweet After Charlottesville Violence Nears 'Like' Record
(CBS) -- President Obama's tweet following the violent clashes and domestic terror attack in Virgina has made Twitter history, becoming the second most-liked since the social media site launched, according to USA Today.
The first of three tweets, at over 2.45 million likes as of Tuesday morning, surpassed talk show host Ellen Degeneres' selfie tweet at the Academy Awards in 2014. The two subsequent tweets had 950,000 and 1.1 million likes.
In responding to the Charlottesville violence at a gathering of white nationalists, Obama chose to quote former South African President Nelson Mandela:
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017
"People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love..."
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017
"...For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." - Nelson Mandela
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017
Obama included a photo of children of various ethnicities.
Collectively, his three tweets on the violence in Virginia totaled nearly 4.6 million likes as of 1 p.m. on Thursday.
"No one is born hating another person because of the color 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," read the tweet, quoting a line of text from Mandela's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom."
The most-liked tweet comes from Ariana Grande after the terror attack at her concert in Manchester, England.