Obama pleads with young influencers to help Biden, 81, get re-elected after largely ticking off TikToker in White House

Former President Barack Obama met with a group of social media influencers over the weekend and urged them to be nicer to President Joe Biden and help him win his re-election campaign.

The group of influencers were expecting a ‘special guest’, but didn’t know it would be Obama, according to an attendee.

“So I heard this was where the cool kids hung out, and you know, I always wanted to be one of the cool kids,” Obama said. said when he entered the room.

The former president admitted that it was a “cynical time” in politics, and that viewers were turning away from the current political discourse in America.

“I want you to use your influence, and it doesn’t have to be boring. I don’t expect you to have a bunch of charts and graphs,” Obama said.

Obama met with a group of about 80 different social media influencers on Saturday Axiosand encouraged them to participate.

“I understand,” Obama added. ‘You know, to be honest, I mainly watch sports. Because it feels like everything is burning and burning.”

He urged online digital creators to put aside their differences with Biden, reminding them that politics was often “messy.”

“Joe Biden, you may not agree with everything he does,” he said. “By the way, you didn’t agree with everything I did. And that’s okay. Because in a big, messy, complicated country like this, there will be disagreements.”

Obama encouraged online creators to get creative and rely on humor to get more people to support Biden.

“I understand that people are swiping or scrolling, and you have to use humor and other things that engage people,” he said.

Top influencers, especially on TikTok, remain angry with Biden for supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. They are also angry at Biden for signing a bill that could ban the popular video-sharing app TikTok.

US President Joe Biden takes part in a conversation with former US President Barack Obama and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel

Joe Biden and Barack Obama campaign together in Pennsylvania

The Biden campaign has tried to reach more influencers by hosting online parties and events for prominent voices, but these have been welcomed with some malaise and even some hostility from digital creators.

Biden recently got angry at a TikTok star and even threatened to throw away his phone after he approached the president and started questioning him about the war in Gaza.

Obama was one of the first presidents to enjoy the benefits of social media when he first ran for president.

At the time, voters responded positively to his new approach to politics on relatively new platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, celebrating the dawn of a new political era around former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Since then, Obama has shown great interest in influencing the influencers.

President Joe Biden shares a kiss as he arrives for a campaign event with former President Barack Obama, moderated by Jimmy Kimmel

Obama remains keenly interested in the evolution of social media and asks social media companies to censor more misleading political content

In 2017, Obama met with young activists and lamented Clinton’s loss to Trump, telling influencers that this was partly due to Trump’s allies using social media to shift the political narrative shift.

“The question is: Are you able to do that in reverse, but with things that are true and not just designed to create anger, resentment and frustration?” he asked.

“So, fix that, will you?” he added with a chuckle.

In 2022, Obama criticized social media companies for not doing enough to censor information on social media platforms.

“The First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It does not apply to private companies like Facebook and Twitter,” he said.

He called for more “value judgments” about content moderation and censorship on social media, lamenting that not all content should be allowed to spread evenly.

‘(O)over time we lose our ability to distinguish between fact, opinion and large-scale fiction. Or maybe we’ll just call it quits,” he said.