Trump's Debate Behavior Looks Familiar

Political Twitter has been readying their collective Twitter fingers for weeks leading up to the political event of the season: the first presidential debate on Sept. 26. There has been a lot to weigh in on about both candidates during this election, so as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton duked it out for the first time face-to-face at Hofstra University on Monday evening, the unofficial competition for the perfect tweet to capture this historic debate was fierce. But this one tweet from the first presidential debate told us everything that we needed to know about the performance of the two candidates.

Clinton and Trump debated for 90 minutes straight. Yes, that's an hour-and-a-half of straight banter about the future of our country, which at times looked bleak. But they didn't get a break, and neither did Twitter. The fire was strong, there were thousands of tweets using the hashtags #debatenight and #debate, and there were likely many more messages that didn't include hashtags. Needless to say, there was a lot to comment on with the debate — from Trump's incessant sniffling (for real, this time) to Clinton actually openly laughing on the debate stage. But the entire absurdity of the night was encapsulated in the wise words of Rashad Alaiyan, the social media manager for Scott Wiener's California state senate campaign.

Trump might actually be a sentient Twitter egg after the first presidential debate. You know what I'm talking about — the super anonymous trolls who don't bother with their real name, much less an image to help identify them on social media before slipping in your mentions to mercilessly troll whatever you have to say with a counterargument, even if what you're saying is indisputably true.

That, in a nutshell (or in this case a tweet) was Trump on the debate stage on Monday night. Clinton said that Trump initially supported the war in Iraq. Trump countered with nope, never (he did). Clinton said that Trump called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, to which Trump exclaimed he absolutely did not (even though he for sure said that)! Clinton reminded Trump that he said he would negotiate down the U.S. national debt. Trump said: "Wrong" (but, again, he said it).

It sounds a lot like Twitter, doesn't it? Fighting falsehood with fact, only to be told with no real rhyme or reason that you're wrong about something, just because, well, that's how it is. So congratulations, Rashad Alaiyan, for raising awareness that Trump is the breathing version of the internet's most annoying avatar. Trump wants to slide in your DMs, America.