Obama's Charlottesville response just became most-liked tweet in history

Barack Obama may not be the president anymore but that's not stopping him from making history.

In the wake of the deadly clash between neo-Nazi hate groups and protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, President Donald Trump's usually eager Twitter fingers remained inactive for hours while Obama rose to the challenge of addressing the nation.

Now, just days after the former president responded to the tragic violence with a powerful Nelson Mandela quote, his tweet has become the most-liked in history.

The record-breaking tweet in the series of three includes an image of Obama smiling through a window at four children, accompanied by Mandela's words, "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..."

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The tweet quickly gained over 2 million likes by Tuesday afternoon, and on Wednesday a spokesperson from Twitter confirmed to Mashable it had become the second most liked tweet of all time.

Then on Tuesday night at approximately 10:07 p.m. ET, Obama's tweet catapulted to the top of the Twitter totem, setting a new all-time record. The tweet netted an impressive 2,705,809 likes (and rising) at the time of writing.

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The second most-liked tweet now belongs to Ariana Grande, whose 2017 emotional message to fans after the deadly Manchester bombing attack at her concert received 2,703,448 likes. And of course, the third most-liked tweet in history goes to Ellen DeGeneres' beloved Oscars selfie from 2014, with 2,418,912 likes.

But while Obama's tweet may be the most liked, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed Tuesday it's only the fifth most retweeted tweet ever —trailing behind Ariana Grande, Louis Tomlinson, Ellen DeGeneres, and of course, the infamous plea for Wendy's chicken nuggets.

Still ... not too shabby, right? What do you think, Trump?

UPDATE: Aug. 16, 2017, 9:03 a.m. UTC Updated to include tweet announcement from Twitter.