Twitter flipped the switch, and President Joe Biden officially has the @POTUS handle, and Vice President Kamala Harris is officially @VP.
“There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face,” Biden wrote. “That’s why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families.”
Harris tweeted video of her taking the oath of office, with the caption, “It’s an honor to be your Vice President.”
Biden didn’t inherit the 33.3 million followers on the account yesterday.
“In a change in practice from 2017, when President Donald Trump entered office, Twitter Inc. plans to reset both the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse official accounts to zero followers for Biden,” Bloomberg reported Thursday.
As of Friday, President Donald Trump’s @POTUS account had 33.3 million followers, and the @WhiteHouse account had 26 million followers.
About an hour after Biden took his oath of office Wednesday, @POTUS had 2.4 million followers and @WhiteHouse had 2 million.
Biden’s aides told Bloomberg it’s unfair Twitter isn’t handing over followers along with the official accounts.
“They are advantaging President Trump’s first days of the administration over ours,” said Rob Flaherty, the transition’s digital director who will be director of digital strategy in the Biden White House. “If we don’t end the day with the 12 million followers that Donald Trump inherited from Barack Obama, then they have given us less than they gave Donald Trump, and that is a failure.”
As a sort of compromise, the Biden team has launched an account with the handle @PresElectBiden, which will automatically become become @POTUS at 12:01 p.m. Inauguration Day.
Although there’s only the one tweet so far, more than 600,000 people have clicked the “follow” button so they’ll be transitioned to the official account next week.
The president-elect’s team, @Transition46, is now @WhiteHouse; Vice President-elect Harris’ political account, @SenKamalaHarris, is now @VP; Jill Biden’s current account, @FLOTUSBiden, is now @FLOTUS, as in first lady of the United States; and the president-elect’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, who currently uses @PressSecPsaki, will become @PressSec.
Twitter is also marking the historic nature of this administration with @SecondGentleman, the official account for Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff.
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