Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump was “tentatively planning to live-tweet” the first two Democratic presidential debates. Thankfully, that plan fell through last night, when the first of two ten-candidate debates took place in Miami.
Not that Trump was silent. He fired off a few tweets during the debate. Only one provided commentary on the content. It was one word long.
But this is Trump, so you know he couldn’t stop there. As the second hour of the debate began, NBC experienced technical difficulties. After Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd tagged in for moderators Lester Holt, José Díaz-Balart, and Savannah Guthrie, muffled noises played in the auditorium. “We are hearing our colleague’s audio,” Todd said as he and Maddow fumbled for a few minutes. They then threw to an unscheduled commercial break.
Cue Trump, who tweeted “.@NBCNews and @MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible technical breakdown in the middle of the debate. Truly unprofessional and only worthy of a FAKE NEWS Organization, which they are!”
Finally, as the debate entered its final segment, Trump retweeted a video suggesting he wouldn’t just win election in 2020, but also in 2024, 2028, and on and on and on — a very healthy and normal thing to do.
As the debate ended, Trump and his gnat-like attention span appeared to move on. He tweeted about upcoming talks at the G20 summit with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and then appeared to sign off for the night.
But, as he is wont to do, Trump woke up thinking about Democrats and the media. So early Thursday, he tweeted a video altering the footage of NBC’s audio issues to look like he had interrupted the debate, Kool-Aid Man–style.
The whole thing would be bizarre if it wasn’t Trump. And we get to do it all over again tonight.
