The Biden administration will have to start from scratch with their new White House Twitter account, according to a spokesperson for the company. President Trump inherited all the followers of the account when his administration took the reins from Barack Obama back in 2017.
The @WhiteHouse and @POTUS accounts originally created during the Obama administration will both be reset to zero once Joe Biden is officially sworn into office on Jan. 20.
Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson stated that, “Twitter will notify followers of these accounts to provide context that the content will be archived and allow them the choice to follow the Biden administration’s new accounts. For example, people who follow @WhiteHouse will be notified that the account has been archived as @WhiteHouse45 and given the option to follow the new @WhiteHouse account.”
The accounts for @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet and @LaCasaBlanca will also find their follower counts reset on inauguration day.
The @WhiteHouse account currently has over 26 million followers and the @POTUS account has more than 33 million.
Biden campaign digital director Rob Flaherty didn’t seem to be too happy about the news, saying, “In 2016, the Trump admin absorbed all of President Obama’s Twitter followers on @POTUS and @WhiteHouse—at Team 44’s urging. In 2020, Twitter has informed us that as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero,” Flaherty wrote in an initial tweet. He continued, “happy to share the email thread where we pushed back, and we were told this was unequivocal.”
Looking at Biden and Trump’s personal Twitter accounts, Trump wins in a landslide. Trump’s account has 88.5 million followers, while Biden checks in with 21.7 million.
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