The Top 9 Most Retweeted Tweets Of 2017 Feature A Few Obama Favorites, But Absolutely Nothing From Trump

At the time of this writing, Donald Trump hasn’t tweeted in over 24 hours. This probably has something to do with the president’s weekend tweet about firing his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, whose recent plea deal with investigators is bound to affect the Trump-Russia investigation. Or, it might not. Either way, considering the president’s penchant for responding to asinine things on social media, it’s a sure bet that he will find a way to tweet something about Twitter’s newly released list of the most retweeted tweets of 2017. Why? Because he isn’t on it.

Among the nine entries Twitter included in its year-end list, President Barack Obama garnered three spots — including his indirect response to the “Unify the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the tragic violence it caused. With a quote from Nelson Mandela, Obama tweeted a picture of himself speaking with and smiling at a diverse group of young children in a window. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” the quote read. The second highest entry on the list, to date the tweet has received over 1.7 million retweets.

The other two Obama tweets to be included come from January 10th, when the outgoing president asked his followers “to believe — not in my ability to create change, but in yours,” and January 20th, his last day in office.

Trump did manage to score two references on the list, albeit indirect ones. The first, it can be argued, is Obama’s Charlottesville tweet, as the Mandela quote stands in opposition to the sitting president’s controversial “both sides” claim regarding who was to blame for the violence. The second is a hugely popular LeBron James tweet from September, in which “King James” called Trump a “bum” for calling out Steph Curry after he publicly declined to visit the White House with his team. James’s tweet, so far, has been retweeted over half a million times.

The list also includes several tweets about disaster relief for the city of Houston following Hurricane Harvey, a tweet from the band Linkin Park’s official account commemorating deceased singer Chester Bennington, and Ariana Grande’s emotional response to the Manchester terrorist attack. Thankfully, Twitter’s rankings begins on a much brighter (and Trump-less) note with viral phenomena Carter Wilkerson’s plea for a year of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. It currently boasts over 3.6 million retweets.