Donald Trump dropped in on Reddit on Wednesday for an “Ask Me Anything” session on the very same night that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were set to speak at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.
But if the intent was to steal Dems’ thunder, it didn’t seem to work.
“Trump’s Reddit AMA is amazingly dull, like some staffer is copy-pasta-ing his lamest quotes,” one person tweeted.
“Thought the Trump AMA was going to be Nolan’s Batman movies but so far it’s more like Batman v. Superman,” tweeted another.
In addition to being boring, Trump seemed to have some technical difficulty, first with his plane and then with his WiFi.
More than 16,000 comments had poured in ahead of the event. But almost an hour after it began, he’d barely responded to a handful of questions.
“Voter fraud is always a serious concern and authorities must be vigilant from keeping those from voting that are not authorized to do so,” Trump posted in response to a question on the issue.
Asked about space exploration. Trump said: “Honestly I think NASA is wonderful! America has always led the world in space exploration.” We appreciate his enthusiasm, but that doesn’t really tell us anything …
About the media, Trump gave his usual stump attack: “I have been very concerned about media bias and the total dishonesty of the press. I think new media is a great way to get out the truth.”
Trump also referred to rival Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” and vowed to repeal Obamacare in his first days in office. Yup, we’ve heard that before.
Though dubbed “Ask Me Anything,” it was anything but, as only established users were allowed to participate in order to weed out digital protesters. Moderators also screened questions and comments. The Q&A session was posted on “The_Donald” subreddit, which has over 180,000 subscribers.
“For this AMA we have temporarily taken extra security measures to keep our community free from troublemakers,” a moderator wrote. “We built the wall 10 ft taller, you might say.”
Of course, that didn’t stop Trump critics from posting their questions on Twitter.
“Damn. I got banned from the Donald Trump AMA. I just wanted to know his thoughts on Orange Tic Tacs changing its flavor,” wrote one Twitter user.
“Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee tweeted: “What advice do you have for young people who want to get into the political-asshole field?”
Trump’s appearance on the news aggregation site came hours after comments he made at a press conference in Florida that encouraged supposed Russian computer hackers to attack Clinton’s email accounts.
https://twitter.com/ChrisNovembrino/status/758458561722744832
https://twitter.com/dwilc/status/758451007324098561
Thought the Trump AMA was going to be Nolan's Batman movies but so far it's more like Batman v. Superman.
— Charlie Gile (@CharlieGileNBC) July 27, 2016