US1 min(s) read
Published 17:20 21 Nov 2020 GMT
Twitter has announced that it will automatically transfer the official '@POTUS' presidential handle to the current president-elect Joe Biden on January 20th, 2021 - Inauguration Day.
As reported by CBS News, even if the current incumbent president, Donald Trump, refuses to concede the election, the '@POTUS' will be transferred to the new administration.
Other official Twitter accounts - such as @whitehouse, @VP, and @FLOTUS - will also be transferred to Biden's team.
A spokesperson for Twitter told CBS News: "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."
In addition, just like with the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration in 2017, all tweets currently present on those accounts will be archived. The accounts will be reset to zero tweets in preparation for the new administration on Inauguration Day.
In the video below, Hillary Clinton appears to predict Donald Trump's reaction to the 2020 election:
[[jwplayerwidget||https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/1W89HrzU-Q0L14jDU.mp4||1W89HrzU]]
The @POTUS account currently has 32.8 million followers, and most recently, the account has just featured retweets from 74-year-old Donald Trump's personal Twitter account, which currently stands at 88.9 million followers.
As of this writing, Trump's personal Twitter account is the sixth most-followed account on the social media platform.
Per Brandwatch, the most followed person on Twitter is former US president Barack Obama, with 125.9 million followers.
Recently, Trump has been very vocal on Twitter to dispute every major US network projecting that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1326158760826560515]]
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Trump has frequently tweeted that he will ultimately emerge victorious, and repeatedly made unfounded claims of voter fraud.
In response, Twitter has been forced to place warning flags on many of the President's recent tweets, with one particular flag reading: "This claim about election fraud is disputed."
When clicked, users are taken to fact-check pages stating "there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud" in states such as Detroit, Michigan, and others.
As per the BBC, Biden was asked by a journalist on Tuesday what he thought of Trump's refusal to concede in the 2020 election.
"I just think it's an embarrassment, quite frankly," Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware.
"The only thing that, how can I say this tactfully, I think it will not help the president's legacy."
"At the end of the day, you know, it's all going to come to fruition on January 20," he added, referring to Inauguration Day.
