Biden will receive @POTUS Twitter account even if Trump refuses to concede

Social media giant says it is ‘actively preparing’ for transition in January

Joe Biden will be given the official US presidential Twitter account on inauguration day even if Donald Trump refuses to concede.

The social media giant said it was “actively preparing” to transfer the @POTUS account, as well as other official White House accounts including @FLOTUS, @VP and @whitehouse, to the new administration once it takes power early next year.

“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021. As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration,” spokesperson Nick Pacilio said in a statement on Friday.

Representatives from the Biden-Harris transition team would also meet senior staffers from the platform, the company told The Hill.

The Twitter account @POTUS – the acronym for President Of The United States – has more than 32 million followers and is a powerful tool for presidents to communicate with Americans.

But for Mr Trump, the account very much comes a distant second to his personal Twitter account, which has almost three times the number of followers and is his preferred channel of communication.

Mr Trump has so far refused to concede the election he lost to Mr Biden and has used Twitter to make baseless claims about mass election fraud, of which there is no evidence.

But ultimately the current president has little control over the transition of power, and once the election is certified he will be removed from office on midday 20 January whether he accepts it or not.

Mr Biden is projected to win 306 electoral college seats – 36 seats clear of the threshold required to win – and his popular vote lead has extended to more than 6 million with most of the votes now counted.