Best Memes of the Second Presidential Debate

Amid an election season partly defined by the record-breaking distastefor its major party candidates, one person emerges whose near-unanimous popularity is uniting the country. His name is Kenneth Bone.

During last night’s Town Hall debate, where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sparred in front of an audience of undecided voters, Bone rose to ask a question about energy policy. “What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil plant workers?” he asked the candidates.

Before he could even finish the question, Twitter erupted in celebration of the man, partly for his fresh-to-death red sweater and black-rimmed glasses combo---an early contender for Halloween costume ideas---and partly for the earnestness of his question, which rang like a siren song between the sound of two ships raucously warring at sea.

Trump answered the question by saying he’s “all for alternative forms of energy,” but that we should take advantage of domestic clean coal and natural gas reserves. While Trump is right that solar energy isn’t enough, some environmentalists say that embracing coal would be catastrophic. Clinton, on the other hand, responded by touting the importance of embracing alternative energy to stave off climate change, while acknowledging Trump’s claim that her policy would put coal miners out of work. She has proposed a $30 billion plan to revitalize communities where coal is currently an important job creator.

Addressing another audience question, this one about the rise of Islamophobia, Trump said Muslims need to “come in and report when they see things going on,” with “things” presumably referring to suspicious behavior (for the record, the FBI says Muslim-Americans already do that).

Regardless, Trump’s call for Muslims to report suspicious behavior was meme-ified with the creation of the #MuslimsReportStuff hashtag. This tweet kicked off the narrative.

Shortly after, thousands of people flooded Twitter using the hashtag to reject Trump's imperative that Muslim-Americans more than anyone else need to "see something, say something."

Of course, as memes do, not all were the result of policy questions. The lighthearted ones were spread just as far and wide---welcome moments of levity during a wild-as-hell debate night that started with an unprecedented press conference where Trump used Bill Clinton’s rape accusers to redirect attention away from the abusive and sexist remarks he said about women in a leaked tape from 2005 (reminder: Hillary, not Bill Clinton, is running for president).

There was that time Trump loomed menacingly over Clinton.

There was the meme where both Clinton and Trump appeared to be singing a duet.

There was the cameraman who randomly zoomed in on Clinton’s face, a la The Office or *Curb Your Enthusiasm. *

There was that time people had no idea the Syrian city was named Aleppo.

And, of course, the many reactions of the audience members, whose facial expressions sum up what it’s like being an American in this crazy, crazy election year.

Literally, same.