For those keeping score, former President Barack Obama beat current President Donald Trump in Christmas Twitter popularity this year.
On the morning of Dec. 25, the president tweeted a video wishing viewers a “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!” and by the afternoon, it had received more than 128,000 likes and more than 34,000 retweets, Newsweek reports.
“At this time of the year, we see the best of America and the soul of the American people,” first lady Melania Trump says in the video. “This Christmas season, we celebrate our blessings as Americans and we pray for peace all over the world.” Donald Trump added that he and his wife were “delighted to wish America and the entire world a very merry Christmas.”
The video, which includes images of the president and first lady visiting hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, got more than 2 million views.
However, a photo that Barack Obama tweeted a couple hours later was far more popular, generating more than 724,000 likes and more than 149,000 tweets.
The former president tweeted out a picture of him with his wife, two daughters and five other children, along with the caption, “On behalf of the Obama family, Merry Christmas! We wish you joy and peace this holiday season.”
It was the same picture they used for their 2015 Christmas tweet, and as usual it contained the words “Merry Christmas,” though Donald Trump has implied otherwise.
In a Dec. 20 speech, the president opened his remarks by saying: “I told you that we would be saying Merry Christmas again, right?”
“With Trump as your president, we are going to be celebrating Merry Christmas again, and it’s going to be done with a big, beautiful tax cut.”
The same day, former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh made the accusation more explicit: “The Trump family’s first Christmas card contains a word that was noticeably absent from all eight of Obama’s Christmas cards: CHRISTMAS!”
However, as NPR reported, there are many examples of Barack Obama using the phrase “Merry Christmas.”
In his weekly address on Christmas Eve 2016, for example, his first words were: “Merry Christmas, everybody.”
His 2015 Christmas card tweet contained the caption, “Merry Christmas, and happy holidays to you and yours.”
And in 2013, the card simply said, “Merry Christmas.”
In fact, the Obama administration said “Merry Christmas” annually for eight years, NPR notes, citing journalist Chris Donovan.
Christmas 2017 isn’t the first holiday that Barack Obama has bested Donald Trump in Twitter popularity, observes Newsweek.
Barack Obama’s 2017 Thanksgiving tweet, featuring a photo of him with his family and the message, “From the Obama family to yours, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving full of joy and gratitude,” was more popular than Trump’s “HAPPY THANKSGIVING!” shout-out, which was accompanied by a video of himself.
Overall, the former president won the 2017 Twitter popularity battle, claiming three of Twitter’s nine most retweeted posts of the year, while none of Donald Trump’s tweets made the top ten.
The playing field is tilted in Barack Obama’s favor in another way, as well. He has 98.2 million Twitter followers, compared to 45.1 million for Donald Trump.