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Best Tweets Of The First 2016 Presidential Debate

By: Kyle Sammin
12 min read

As a predicted 100 million people tuned in to watch the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, many took out their frustrations on Twitter.

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The first of three presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went down last night at Hofstra University in New York, the home state of both candidates. NBC’s Lester Holt moderated.
Some of you were dreading it.


Others were looking forward to it.


And a few were pretty psyched.


Either way, a lot of you had something to say on Twitter. Here are some of the highlights.

From the get-go, it was clear there was no love lost between the candidates.


Clinton’s opening statement was out of her standard playbook.


Trump’s opening statement was unusually calm, if sniffly.


The first topic was the economy, and Clinton remixed a catchphrase from the ’80s.


A congested Trump turned the question specifically to jobs lost by trade, a favorite topic of his.


Clinton pivoted to one of President Obama’s favorites: revitalizing the economy through green jobs, somehow.


Trump tried to disagree, but bumbled the phrasing and seemed frustrated.


Instead, he counter-attacked, hitting Clinton for supporting NAFTA and flip-flopping on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.


Clinton baited Trump on his tax plans…


…and he snapped it right up…


…and said something about ISIS?


Trump went back to his original defense on releasing his tax returns.


Clinton said he won’t release them because he probably didn’t even pay taxes. Trump…agreed?


They next talked about race relations and crime in the inner cities.


Here, Clinton started to gain some momentum and tried to shift to gun control.


Trump touted the need for crime prevention.


She called for a ban on gun purchases by people on government watch lists. Again, he agreed.


Holt asked Trump about his long history of questioning Obama’s citizenship.


Clinton had a solid response.


Holt’s question about cybersecurity seemed like a set-up for criticism of Clinton’s e-mail practices, almost as payback for the birther question to Trump. Instead, Trump talked about how his boy Barron is so good with the computers nowadays and the DNC may well have been hacked by obese basement-dwellers.


Moving to foreign policy, Clinton was on surer ground and began to contrast her expertise with Trump’s lack thereof.


Clinton noted that Trump and she had, at the time, held the same positions on invading Iraq and bombing Libya. Holt agreed. Trump didn’t, and he can prove it: Sean Hannity will vouch for him. Call him and ask!


As the debate wound down, it seems to have occurred to the candidates that neither had explained why they should be president.


Clinton reminded the audience that Trump has been mean to women.


Trump, inexplicably, claimed that his temperament was his greatest asset.


In the end, both agreed they would abide by the results of the election, a boast that in other times had not been required of American candidates. With that, the debate ended.


Trump seemed to have gotten the better of the first 20 minutes, but gradually surrendered the advantage to Clinton.


Voters who approached the debate with pessimism had no reason to change their feelings.


There were a lot of laughs…


… until we remembered:

Kyle Sammin is a senior contributor to The Federalist and the co-host of the Conservative Minds podcast podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleSammin.

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