Trump scored the debate's most retweeted tweet with a 2012 climate theory
Twitter exploded with commentary as the presidential candidates sparred in their first debate — and one of them dominated the social media conversation with the most retweeted tweet.
Unfortunately, however, most of the retweets were probably ironic.
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When the issue of climate change arose, Hillary Clinton brought up an old accusation against Donald Trump. Namely, that he doesn't believe in it and thinks a rival country invented it.
"Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax, perpetrated by the Chinese," Clinton said. "I think it's real."
"I do not," Trump quickly said. "I do not say that. I do not say that."
Fact checkers and social media explorers looked back down the long tunnel of Trump's past tweets and found one that says exactly what he denied on the debate stage.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Despite false claims that the Trump camp was trying to delete such past tweets, it's still online.
The official Twitter government and elections team responsible for official social media metrics found that Trump's tweet, which claimed that China created the concept of global warming, was the most retweeted tweet of the debates.
This is the top Retweeted Tweet during the first US presidential debate: https://t.co/fOOoPvtZHK
— Twitter Government (@gov) September 27, 2016
It's probably not the way that Trump hoped to establish social media dominance following the debate, but that's the way the 140 characters crumble.
