On September 26th, 2016 around 80 million people set a world record as they all watched what some would call one of the biggest bloodbaths to ever air on television.
No I don't mean the Hunger Games, I'm talking about the presidential debate.
It was the first time that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton went head to head and they definitely didn't try to spare anyone's feelings.
As someone who is now of age to vote the presidential debate gave me a lot of insight on both of the candidates. Along with helpful insight it also taught me a few new and somewhat surprising things.
1. The host's job is probably harder than being President of the United States.
Lester Holt had easily the hardest task of the night, moderating the debate.This consisted of creating the questions to be asked and making sure the program stayed on schedule. When the candidates went over their allotted time to talk, Holt had to be the one to cut them off, but they were not too accepting of his requests. I sure wouldn't want to be the one to cut off Donald Trump and tell him no, so I give Holt major credit.
2. They are both amazing at dodging questions.
After Clinton accused Trump of not releasing his tax returns to the public Trump responded with, "I will release my tax returns when she releases her 30,000 deleted e-mails". Holt then confronted Hillary on the issue to which all she had to say was, "It was a mistake" before going right back to bashing Trump. Deleting one, two, or maybe even 3 e-mails is a mistake, not 30,000... But I guess if you just avoid the question we can just act like it never happened right? Noted.
3. Trump's facial expressions say more than he does.
The debate was set up split screen so that both candidates were shown on the screen for the entirety of the program. This lead to my favorite part of the debate, watching Donald Trumps reactions. Although he may not have been able to talk while Hillary was responding his facial expressions said it all. From his ugly winces to his looks of pure confusion, none of them failed to entertain. This also caused a flood of social media memes that were promptly saved to my phone to be used in future arguments. Thanks Donald.
4. Throwing each other under the bus was the main event of the night.
The questions were hard hitting and covered some very important topics, but the candidates seemed to be more concerned with bashing each other rather than answering the given question. From Hillary accusing Trump of hiding things on his tax returns, to Trump bringing up Hillary's deleted e-mails it was just one dig after the other. It looked as though some 8 year old children were arguing over broken crayons; it was all pointless bickering. Didn't they ever learn if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all?
5. Even presidential candidates don't have to follow the rules.
At the beginning of the debate Holt clearly outlined the rules that "both parties had agreed on"; a question would be asked and each candidate would have 2 minutes to respond, then the next ten minutes would be used for open debate, and lastly no audience applause. Of course neither of them listened to these rules. Even with Lester constantly telling them time is up they simply would not listen or they would flat out tell him no. My mom constantly tries to get my little brother to follow rules, but why should he listen to her if both people running for the president of the United States don't even do what they're told?
6. Most people enjoyed applying Snapchat filters rather than actually watching.
Puppy dogs, face swaps, frowning faces, and many more Snapchat filters were the highlight of the debate for many viewers. The split screen set up made it particular easy to apply any wanted Snapchat filter to the faces of the candidates, and these filters did not disappoint. A quick look through the stories section of the app showed that almost every single person that I was friends with gave them some type of filter. At times it was almost more entertaining to watch these stories than the actual debate, and I now know that when you swap Trump and Clinton's face it is not a very pretty sight.
No matter who you are voting for or what your opinion is on each candidate I think we can all agree that the debate was definitely not what was expected. I think we should all be a little worried about the two people we are leaving this country in the hands of.
