It's hard not to like this.
Former President Barack Obama's response on Twitter to the violence that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend is now the most liked tweets ever.
On Saturday night, Obama quoted former South African President Nelson Mandela in a series of tweets:
The first of the bunch, in which Obama is smiling at children of different ethnicities, topped 2.8 million likes on Tuesday night. A tweet byAriana Grande following the deadly bombing in May at the end of her concert in Manchester, England, previously held the top spot with 2.7 million likes.
Obama tweeted the quote from Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom a few hours after James Alex Fields Jr., 20, plowed his car into marchers protesting the "Unite the Right" rally attended by various white supremacist groups on Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Also killed that day were two on-duty Virginia state troopers whose helicopter crashed on the outskirts of Charlottesville.
President Donald Trumpresponded to the clashes in Charlottesville in a very different way on Saturday, saying:
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides ― on many sides," Trump said on national television. "It's been going on for a long time in our country, not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. It's been going on for a long, long time."
Trump also tweeted about the violence numerous times on Saturday. None of his tweets, however, specifically condemned any white supremacy extremist groups.
Trump's most popular tweet addressing the events in Charlottesville on Saturday had not gotten more than 190,000 likes as of Tuesday morning. The others didn't exceed 125,000 likes.
Facing bipartisan criticism over his initial responses, Trump on Monday was more explicit in comments he made at the White House. "Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to what we hold dear as Americans," he said.