Last Monday, around 84 million Americans were glued to their TV screens, including me, watching the first presidential debate of the 2016 election season. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exchanged a war of words with the 90-minute commercial-free debate aired on CNN and elsewhere at 6 PM Pacific Standard Time.

My heart was pounding once I saw Hillary in her signature pantsuit and Donald with his fake orange spray tan walk onto the debate stage and shake hands. Pre-debate polls had Clinton leading 46 percent to Trump’s 44 percent and the debates definitely will shift those numbers one way or the other. As a young student who is among many concerned for the well-being for the nation, you can understand where I’m coming from.

As I was watching, I followed the #BroncosDebate hashtag on Twitter since students were encouraged to give our thoughts on the debate on the social media platform. Tweets flooded in either supporting Trump or Clinton, but some took a more bird’s eye view and talked of how the United States voting system is the “lesser of the two evils.”

I tweeted about 15 times during the 90 minutes.  Overall, it was hard to follow the issues because of the dodging and jousting that went on between the two for most of the night. Every time Trump interrupted Clinton to question her sourcing, his persona came off as thin-skinned if you were to ask me. Nightly News host Lester Holt failed to reign Trump on what he talked about. His opinion bled through more than his policies he plans to put into place. But I must admit, it was a good risk of Trump to talk of racial issues instead of how great his business is doing in said place. I will give him that.

I was rooting for Hillary Clinton during the debate, but she fell through on talking about Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ issues she is renowned for supporting, and too often held a frozen smile rather than speaking out.

Live tweets were as fun to watch as the performance, and students didn’t hold back as the debate unraveled.

“Trump speaks the truth when he says community-police relations must be improved. Stop and frisk won’t help though,” tweeted junior Michael Wheeler.

In regards to Trump saying Clinton is not a good leader, twelfth-grader John Lamm joined the debate with“ “Hillary should join the track team because apparently she has no stamina.”

“Well that was just so much. I commend @HillaryClinton for keeping her patience and I think for that alone she won” senior Seema Khatcherian praises Clinton on her patience and dealing with backhanded sayings from her opponent.

Milad Dehghan, an eleventh grader, expands on Clinton’s plan on jobs by saying, “Hillary clearly states her opinion on creating jobs and helping the lower class. Her plan is able to help the economy.”

Ninety minutes and 499 tweets later, the debate night wrapped to a close for Northgate students. With lots of fiery opinions, it was an adrenaline-filled way to watch a presidential debate so interactively.

Round one of this bloody debate series is over but there is more to come: next up is one on Oct. 9 in St. Louis, Missouri and the last, and most important one, on Oct. 19 in Las Vegas, Nevada.