On Monday night, the debate that people around the globe had been waiting for took place – the two US presidential candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Reoublican Donald Trump, finally squared off.
While Clinton came prepared with facts and answered all the questions thrown at her, Trump was less than charismatic, unprepared, and gave incoherent responses. People pointed out how Clinton had to be come doubly prepared (simply by virtue of being a woman) in order to win, while all Trump had to do was make sure not to embarrass himself (which he obviously nevertheless did.)
Clinton was poised and spoke confidently, while smiling, we might add... but some men had a problem with that. But they had a problem with her at the Democratic National Convention too, when she apparently didn’t smile enough and asked her to smile more. Go figure.
Hillary hit Trump about him not paying his fair share of taxes and refusing to release his tax returns, to which he said that he wants Clinton to release her 33,000 deleted emails first, in what sounded very much like a “you first!” playground tactic. There is very little tangible data he can attack her with, so whenever he gets the chance, he simply harps on the same points over and over.
At one point in the debate, he said that he would never even think about personally attacking Hillary (but all those tweets calling her crooked don’t count as a ‘personal attack’, since she has taken out full ads against him, which are the real attack, apparently.)
Other things that happened included Trump mansplaining policy to a woman whose entire career has been built on it, and interrupting her 51 times in the entirety of the debate, as Vox has stated... 25 of those happening within the first 26 minutes.
A lot of women on Twitter reacted to just that, pointing out that by virtue of him being a white male, Trump has gotten away with a complete disregard for facts, but Clinton constantly faces scrutiny for anything she does, despite her experience, because she is a woman.
He also said his temperament is better than Hillary’s and that he’s more suited to be a president. But remind us again, who was the one getting riled up and screaming “WRONG” at every possible, fact-based sentence that Clinton said?
Apart from being a racist bigot, he also said a few days earlier that Hillary Clinton does not have the “looks” to be the president. When called out on that during the debate, he attempted to backtrack and said instead that she does not have the “stamina” to be President.
But Mr Trump, she was not the one who seemed out of breath and had to keep drinking water.
However, the entire mood of the debate could be summarised by this one tweet.
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