Donald Trump has never put much effort into hiding his dislike of Barack Obama, but behind the scenes, the president is allegedly even more obsessed with his predecessor than he lets on in public, a new report claims.
This week, Trump had a personal meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in which Trump reportedly devoted a significant portion to complaining about how he was losing Twitter followers. As The Daily Beast reported, Dorsey explained to Trump that his dip in followers was due to Twitter combing the site for bot accounts and deleting them, but the report found hat Trump has another big complaint about the microblogging site — Obama’s popularity.
Trump had 59.9 million followers on Twitter as of early Thursday, while Obama had 106 million. Obama’s posts also generate more of a reaction, getting double or sometimes triple the number of likes and retweets as Trump, though Obama does tweet much less frequently and tends to reserve messages for congratulating accomplishments or offering condolences in tragedies.
The disparity has gotten Trump’s goose, the report claims, and he isn’t quiet about his displeasure.
“Trump has repeatedly griped to associates about how Obama has had more Twitter followers than he has, even though—by Trump’s own assessment—he is so much better at Twitter than Obama is,” the report claimed.
Trump has long taken aim at Obama on a range of areas that he has done himself, like issuing executive orders (which Trump has now done at a higher rate than Obama) and going on golf trips while in office (which Trump has done at a rate nearly three times that of Obama).
It may not help Trump’s Twitter complaints that the list of the most-liked tweets of all-time is filled with examples of Obama needling Trump. The record No. 1 most-liked tweet featured Obama offering a show in contrast to Trump’s response to the violence at Charlottesville, Virginia, where an alleged white nationalist attacked and killed a counter-protester and a number of others were arrested for carrying out acts of violence.
Trump responded by initially refusing to condemn violence by white nationalists, saying there were fine people “on both sides” and questioning why no one was blaming what he called the “alt left” for their behavior. Trump was eventually forced to walk back the criticism after widespread condemnation for his remarks.
Obama, by contrast, took to Twitter to offer a message of hope for the nation.
“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
While Donald Trump has not made his complaints about Obama’s Twitter followers public, he has been open in his criticism of the site and claimed that it is intentionally stifling conservative voices.
