Tweets published about the 2024 presidential debate Tuesday night were X-cellent.
And how couldn’t they be? The highly anticipated debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump had a little bit of something for everyone. Harris focused on pressing issues that affect American voters, while Trump, uh … sounded a lot like “an old man yelling at a cloud,” according to Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The debate went completely off the rails about a half an hour in, when Harris trolled Trump about his rallies — a subject she, and practically the whole world, knows will get under his skin.
“He talks about fictional characters, like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about how windmills cause cancer,” Harris said of his rallies. “What you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
Trump took the bait, by ardently defending his beloved rallies. From that point on, a visibly enraged Trump deflected from answering moderators’ direct questions about his policies and his tenure as president by rambling about false and half-baked far-right conspiracy theories and defending himself in truly bizarre ways.
A sampling of some of the more bonkers quotes that came out of his mouth:
- Claiming a state executes babies after they are born, spurring moderator Linsey Davis to shut him down with a fact check by saying: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
- Said that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” It was likely a reference to a questionnaire for the American Civil Liberties Union that Harris filled out in 2019, saying that she supported providing “medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care” for incarcerated or detained individuals.
- Seeming to genuinely believe that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s cats and dogs because he saw it on TV.
- Said he had a “concept of a plan” after he claimed he could improve or replace the Affordable Care Act (which he’s promised to do several times before to no avail).
- Said he’d been “a leader on fertilization, IVF” although he has deep ties with the anti-in vitro fertilization movement.
- Cited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a foreign leader he’s aligned with, although Orbán is an autocrat.
- Referrred to the leader of the Taliban as some dude named “Abdul” and then spoke about sending Abdul photos of his home as a cryptic threat.
So, yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here. But leave it up to X users to add a little humor to all of this gobbledygook. To read the funniest things people had to say during and after the debate, just scroll down.
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