
While Tuesday nights CNN political debate was intended as an opportunity for one of the Democrat Party presidential hopefuls to separate him or herself from the rest of the pack, the best line of the night came from a man who was not even in the room with the debaters nor in the same party.
In effect, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump stole the show with a perfectly-timed tweet explaining that Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Martin OMalley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee spent their night talking about the all the free stuff they were going to give awayincluding ObamaCare benefits and tuition breaks for illegal immigrantswithout once mentioning what they would do to make conditions better for U.S. military veterans.
Amid the Obama administrations Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal, the punishment for secret waiting listswhich have left veterans dying while the government they served denied them medical carehas been scant, and the agency has seen no substantial reforms. Trump has made veterans care a major talking point in his stump speeches.
To be fair, some of the presidential hopefuls talked about giving away free stuff more than othersthose would be Sanders, Clinton, and OMalley. And former Senator Jim Webb (and, as Mediaite points out, Sanders) did talk about what he had done in the past with the post-9/11 G.I. Billbut what would be done in the future is a completely different subject.
So Trump tweeted: Notice that illegal immigrants will be given ObamaCare and free college tuition but nothing has been mentioned about our VETERANS #DemDebate It was the best line of the night by far.
The billionaire also overshadowed Democrats in social media engagement. Time declared that Trump won Twitter during the debate, based on data saying he picked up 60,000 new followersabout 4 times as many as Clinton. Trumps tweet at the time of this writing has nearly 11,000 retweets and 17,000 favorites, while Clintons biggest tweet of the night only reached 3,300 retweets and 4,800 favorites.