Barack Obama’s tweet just became the most ‘liked’ and the 4th most retweeted in Twitter’s history

According to Twitter, Obama’s post-Charlottesville tweet has drawn 3.8 million likes, 1.47 million retweets, and 59,000 replies

Former President Barack Obama has made history again, it appears. This time his mark has been made in the Twitter universe, on the back of a message and photo that he posted Sunday in response to the weekend’s violent and racially charged protests in Charlottesville, Va.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” was Obama’s message, partially quoting remarks from former South African President and activist Nelson Mandela’s 1994 biography “Long Walk to Freedom.” It is accompanied by a picture (see below) of him greeting a diverse group of children at a day-care center’s window.

Twitter Inc. TWTR, +1.32% declared the tweet the most liked in history at 10:07 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 15, according to a Twitter spokeswoman. As of late Wednesday in New York, the tweet had garnered 3.8 million likes, 1.47 million retweets and 59,000 replies.

Previously, as MarketWatch’s Need to Know column reported, the most liked tweet in Twitter’s history was from pop star Ariana Grande with more than 2.7 million likes.

Wednesday afternoon, the tweet also eclipsed Grande’s retweets of 1.14 million, also making it the 4th most retweeted message ever.

A Tuesday evening news conference in an elevator lobby at Trump Tower in Manhattan, intended to discuss Trump’s plans to ramp up infrastructure spending, devolved into a combative tête-à-tête between Trump and reporters, where the 45th president doubled down on weekend remarks placing blame on “both sides” for violence at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville that left one woman dead. “There is blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it,” Trump said Tuesday.

“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” he said, adding that there were also in attendance “very fine people, on both sides.”

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