The presidential Twitter account will automatically be passed down to Joe Biden on Inauguration Day. A spokesperson confirmed on Friday (Nov. 20) that the @POTUS account will be transferred to the president-elect the moment he is sworn in as president at noon on Jan. 20, even if President Donald Trump hasn’t conceded.
“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021,” Nick Pacilio, a spokesperson for Twitter, said in an email to Politico. “As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration.”
As if happened after the Barack Obama presidency, the day Biden is inaugurated, all existing tweets from the account will be archived and will be reset to zero tweets—providing the new president with a clean slate. Twitter will be the one in charge of transferring the account, and they confirmed there is no need for any information to be shared between Trump and Biden’s teams. The same will apply for other official accounts associated with the presidency, including @whitehouse, @VP, and @FLOTUS.
Twitter’s representatives will also be meeting with the Biden-Harris transition teams in the coming months to discuss how the new administrations will use the microblogging website.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stated that once Trump leaves office, his personal account @realDonaldTrump will no longer be subject to the protections it carries under Twitter’s “world leaders” policy. “If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” the executive said at a Congressional hearing earlier this week according to TechCrunch. Trump will still be able to keep the account as a private citizen but could face suspension or bans based on his tweets.
Trump has continued to protest Biden’s victory since he was named the winner on Nov. 7, demanding recounts in several key states. The General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of the formal presidential transition, has also not made any moves to facilitate the process. That is holding back the Biden team by preventing them from accessing the tools they need to begin to prepare for their tenure at the White House.