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Trump's "Temperament" Claims Are Causing A Stir

by Kelly Tunney

During the first presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle on Monday, Donald Trump made quite a few... interesting comments. After the debate, The Washington Post took the time to figure out what people were searching and talking about on social media, and the results are pretty telling. On Facebook specifically, the conversation centered around Trump's assertion that he has a much better temperament than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

During the debate, Trump referred to his temperament as "my strongest asset, maybe by far." And that's a very curious thing to say for someone who tends to overreact to things on Twitter — like that time he described his former opponent "Lyin' Ted Cruz" as being "wacko." Trump's "winning" temperament, as he calls it, is a big plus in his book, but the data suggests that it may not have gone over so well on the social media platform. According to the chart, posts about Trump's comment took over 79 percent of the conversation. That's a huge number, and certainly does not make things look better for him in the grand scheme of things. Even on Twitter, the comments made up 62 percent of the conversation.

According to The Washington Post's chart, the second most popular item on Facebook was Trump and Clinton's discussion of ISIS.

Trump's opinion of his temperament is a high exaggeration at best. Shall we go through some of the things that prove he has a not-so pleasant temperament? He's immaturely called politicians names, insulted women for their appearance, and lashed out at what he deems"corrupt" media.

Looking at it one way, The Washington Post's data might suggest that even though it appears that Trump gets away with some crazy comments since he's constantly repeating the same false things, people don't let them go unnoticed. Even during a presidential debate where outlets have created teams specifically to fact-check assertions, it's important to look at what voters are talking about on their social feeds, and how they're reacting to the debate.

Hopefully the fact that people are discussing Trump's wild comments is a good sign for the election — on that suggests voters aren't going to be fooled by his divisive rhetoric. It will be interesting to see how the conversation evolves during the next two presidential debates before election day.