As US President Donald Trump and former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden sparred their way through the second and final presidential debate on Thursday night in the US, their running mates Kamala Harris and Mike Pence displayed radically different behaviours on Twitter.
Harris took off strong ahead of the debate, getting off the mark with a encouraging tweet for Biden, saying “You got this.”
The vice-presidential candidate kept up her social media activity through the debate, reiterating what Biden was saying, retweeting quotes that his Twitter account was putting out and generally amplifying her running mate’s words.
During a particularly long and interesting section on COVID-19 during the debate, Harris took to Twitter to say that Trump knew in January how deadly the virus could be, adding that he had deliberately misled the American people, in a reiteration of what Biden said.
Later, as Biden and Trump sparred over racism and America’s long-running debate on immigrants, Harris voiced her concerns over the president’s handling of the issue as well, listing his actions, calling them “hateful attacks”.
She also called him an “apologist for racists”, even as Trump said in the debate that he was “the least racist person in this room” during the same prolonged discussion.
And of course, she went out on another encouraging note as well, saying “Tonight, Joe Biden not only won the debate—he took a stand against Trump and all of the harm this administration has caused..”
‘Congratulations, Mr President’: Mike Pence
Where was Vice President Pence all this while? For the most part of the debate, he remained quiet, surfacing only after the debate to say that Trump had won the presidential debate “hands down”.
While he kept retweeting tweets from the Twitter handle of ‘Team Trump’, Pence did not seem to have much to say during the debate, in terms of criticism or support.
But Pence did tweet out a video about the contentious fracking issue on which Biden has repeatedly been attacked over, almost in reply to Trump’s promise during the debate that he would speedily share a video in which he claimed that Biden could be seen promising to ban fracking.
Both Harris and Pence declared the debate a win for Biden and Trump respectively, but who really won? According to a report by The Guardian, snap polls taken after the debate showed that viewers favoured Biden’s performance by about 10-15 points.
And an instant poll of debate watchers by CNN showed that 53 percent thought Biden won the debate, while 39 percent chose Trump.
Meanwhile, US politicians took to Twitter to react to the debate as well.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said after the debate that the contrast between Biden’s America and Trump’s couldn’t be clearer.
Meanwhile, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded sharply after Trump said she “knows nothing about the climate,” during the debate. Criticising Biden’s climate change plan, Trump referred to Ocasio-Cortez (known as AOC), saying, "you know who developed it (the Green New Deal)? AOC plus three.”
Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to correct Trump, saying its actually “AOC plus 115” and shared a photo of her and three other members, writing: "Sisterhood is everything." In another tweet, she went on to call Trump “unhinged”.
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