Less than 48 hours hours after Joe Biden made the shock announcement that he was ending his presidential reelection campaign, almost 400 million online users have flocked to view his official statement.
The president made the announcement via a statement posted to his official X page. In it he said that his time in office was “the greatest honor of my life” and that despite his intention to continue with the campaign it was in the interest of the country for him to step down.
The statement was put online just before 2pm eastern on Sunday. As of 8pm on Monday it had been viewed 396.3 million times, and “liked” almost one million times.
The post had also garnered more than 351,000 reposts.
A follow up post, in which Biden officially endorsed vice president Kamala Harris to take over the party nomination from him, had been viewed 109.1 million times as of 8pm on Monday.
Harris’ own post, in which she thanked Biden for his “extraordinary leadership” and said she was “honored” to accept his endorsement, has just over 23 million views, with 638,000 “likes” and 86,000 reposts.
The vice president currently has 20.1 million followers on X, while the president has 38.3 million.
Shortly after Biden’s announcement, a spate of new social media accounts titled “Kamala HQ” emerged across all platforms.
As of Monday night the “Kamala HQ” X account had a following of 932,500 followers.
An introductory X message from the account, posted at 10.30pm on Sunday read: “Welcome to Kamala HQ.This is the official rapid response page of Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign.”
As of Monday night the post had been viewed 11.1 million times, with 147,000 likes.
Harris’ election campaign team has wasted no time courting young voters with the social media channels, quickly posting memes about Venn diagrams, “brat” summer and viral quotes from the vice president to appeal to Gen-Z’s sense of humor.
The X account featured a post of a Venn diagram to illustrate the similarities between her and Biden’s campaigns — a nod to a viral running joke about Harris’s vocal love for the diagram style.
