The candidates shake hands as the first Presidential debate kicks off -- launching veritable Twitter storm.
Love it or hate it, the debate wasn’t confined to the stage at the University of Denver on Wednesday night. Comments, quips and jokes raged across social networks as the candidates laid out their visions for the next four years. Unsurprisingly, much of the outrage came when Mitt Romney explained that he would cut funding to PBS, right to the face of debate moderator (and PBS employee) Jim Lehrer: “I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like, you too [Jim] — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for.” Overall, according to Twitter, 10.3 million tweets were sent during the 90-minute debate, with a peak of 158,000 tweets per minute at 9:53 p.m. Here are some of the evening’s best tweets.