
One of Donald Trump's supposed strengths is his use of Twitter. But a new analysis finds that President Obama did better than Trump even in social media engagement while he was in office.

Donald Trump loves Twitter. He cannot get enough of it. Despite the fact that his @realDonaldTrump account is likely in violation of the Presidential Records Act, he spends a great deal of his time tweeting. It is his go-to way to vent about all the frustrations of running the country, and he has been known to randomly tweet his opinion about things he just saw on TV.

It is tempting to think of Trump, for all his serious shortcomings as a leader, as a master of social media engagement, if nothing else. But a new analysis from the Associated Press suggests that even on Twitter, Trump is not as competent as his predecessor.

The analysis found that not only has Trump's overall number of likes and retweets been steadily declining since the election, but that even at Trump's best, he received a tiny fraction of the engagement that Obama did when he took to Twitter:

Trump's most retweeted post as president does not come close to matching Barack Obama's. On Jan. 22, amid broad post-inauguration protests, Trump tweeted, "Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views." It was retweeted more than 82,000 times. Obama's 2012 election night post of "Four More Years" was retweeted 940,000 times.


Every day, it becomes apparent Trump can never live up to his own hype. Trump has not been able to get out of Obama's shadow, with most of his signature campaign promises failed or stalled. Now it turns out that even the most famous and identifying feature of Trump's presidency is a tiny fraction of what his predecessor could manage.