The Biggest Tweet of the 1st Trump-Clinton Debate Was Published 4 Years Ago

The social media stats from Monday's presidential face-off revealed some interesting trends

Twitter was abuzz during the presidential debate Monday, but nothing grabbed people's attention like a tweet Donald Trump sent in 2012, according to the company.

Days before that year's election, Trump tweeted that global warming was a Chinese conspiracy "to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." It was the most retweeted tweet during the debate, according to Twitter's government and elections team.

So what made that obscure tweet rise to the top of the Twitter hive mind's consciousness? Hillary Clinton said early on in the debate that Trump called climate change a hoax, and he strongly denied it.

Twitter users, who have always jumped on candidates' statements during debates, were quick to fact check him with his own statements. That China example wasn't the only one.

Elsewhere online, Google's search data suggested that Hillary Clinton gained more visibility from the debate. The tech giant's data and visualizations lab, Google Trends, found that every state in the country was uniformly searching Clinton's name more than Trump's after the debate, where Trump had dominated beforehand.

And she dominated searches for long stretches in two key swing states: Ohio and Florida.

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