Twitter

Obama Tweet in Wake of Charlottesville Breaks Twitter Record, Becomes Most-Liked

The post, with more than 2.8 million likes, surpassed a May 22 tweet from Ariana Grande after a terrorist attack that day killed 22 people at the end of her concert in Manchester

Former President Barack Obama broke a Twitter record Tuesday evening, with his quotation of Nelson Mandela in the wake of the Virginia rally violence becoming the most-liked tweet of all time.

Obama posted the quote across a series of tweets Saturday, the first paired with a photo of the former president and a group of young children. That first tweet, as of early Wednesday, had garnered more than 3.1 million likes. It also had more than 1.3 million retweets.

The tweet came the day violent clashes broke out at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly when someone, allegedly a white nationalist, drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and more than a dozen people were wounded.

Obama, quoting Mandela, the late South African president and anti-apartheid leader, wrote: "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."

The post surpassed a May 22 tweet from Ariana Grande after a terrorist attack that day killed 22 people at the end of her concert in Manchester. Grande's post, as of early Wednesday, had 2.7 million likes and 1.15 million retweets.

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres' 2014 Oscar selfie is the third most-liked tweet of all time with about 2.4 million likes.

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