Topline

The four posts with the most likes

Important facts

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What is Trump’s most liked X post in 2024?

Although the president-elect primarily posts on his own Truth Social platform, he has occasionally tweeted from his X account this year. By far his most popular tweet is a photo of him wearing an apron and waving from a McDonald’s drive-thru. The post, which contains no text, has garnered 1.4 million likes so far.

Important background

After briefly appearing to support Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ candidacy, Musk emerged as Trump’s most vocal supporter and biggest donor in the 2024 presidential election. Musk’s fourth most popular tweet this year marked the first time Musk has endorsed Trump publicly endorsed his candidacy. According to the Federal Election Commission, Musk spent more than $200 million before Election Day to support Trump’s candidacy. The donations include about $193 million donated before Election Day to his pro-Trump America PAC and another $20.5 million to a PAC that supported Trump on abortion issues. Musk also campaigned for Trump in key swing states in the final weeks before Election Day and even appeared alongside him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania – the site of the first assassination attempt against the president-elect. Since Trump’s victory, Musk has become one of the most influential figures in the president-elect’s orbit and was appointed co-head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with cutting government spending. Musk’s growing influence was evident last week when he helped defeat a congressional spending bill by upending it

Surprising fact

Although Musk’s posts received the most likes, YouTuber Mr. Beast managed the most retweeted post of the year in January – which also holds the title of the most retweeted post of all time. In the post, the YouTuber, whose real name is James Donaldson, said he would be giving away $25,000 to 10 randomly selected people who “repost this and follow me.” The post quickly received more than 3.9 million retweets, the most ever before, but the number has since dropped to 3.4 million – presumably because several people deleted their retweets after the advertising period ended.

tangent

While Musk’s top tweets this year were related to the election, the most liked election-related tweet was from President Joe Biden. Biden’s post from January 20, 2021 has 3.6 million likes and reads: “It’s a new day in America.”

Cons

Since his tweets have generated a lot of interest, Musk is under scrutiny for reportedly tweaking the platform’s algorithm to increase his visibility. Last year, Platformer reported that Musk even appeared to hint at major changes to Musk’s algorithms by publishing a meme post showing a woman labeled “Elon’s Tweets” force-feeding milk to a woman labeled “Twitter.” .

Big number

186%. According to a study conducted by Australian researchers, this is the percentage by which the number of likes on Musk’s posts increased between July 13, when he supported Trump, and November 1. However, it’s unclear if this is simply the result of election season driving increased engagement, as other prominent political accounts also saw a 130% increase in their like count. A Washington Post investigation found that between July and October of this year, tweets from Republican leaders were nearly five times more likely to go viral – that is, garner more than 20 million views – compared to Democrats.