President-elect Donald Trump will not use the official presidential Twitter account created by President Barack Obama, he suggested in an interview on Sunday.
“I think I’ll keep it,” Trump told the Sunday Times in an interview, referring to his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account with more than 20 million followers.
“I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working,” he said.
Obama created the first official presidential Twitter account @POTUS in May 2015, but it has only 13.5 million followers, and he sent only 342 tweets as President.
Trump created his account in 2009 and has sent more than 34,000 messages on Twitter.
The Obama team plans to shift the account to the Trump administration, but it appears that Trump is not interested in making it his main account. It is possible that Trump transition staff may use the @POTUS account for other purposes.
NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell confirmed the news on Twitter after speaking to transition sources:
Transition sources tell me @realDonaldTrump intends to keep using his own account as president, not switching to @potus himself
— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) January 16, 2017
Trump admitted during the interview that although he plans to use Twitter less as President, he believes it is important to use it to challenge the press.
“I thought I’d do less of it, but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press — so dishonestly — that I can put out Twitter. … I can go bing bing bing … and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out — this morning on television, Fox — ‘Donald Trump, we have breaking news,’” he explained.
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