X

Best presidential debate meme: How Trump-Biden showdown was worst thing ever

Mark Hamill declares the clash worse than the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, but was it worse than Sharknado?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read
starwarsholiday

One could say the debate was worse than Chewbacca's fashion sense.

Video screenshot by Bonnie Burton/CNET

Americans from across the political spectrum seem to agree: Tuesday night's chaotic presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden was an excruciating disaster. But where does it rank on the list of really, really bad things, say, like The Star Wars Holiday Special?

Spoiler: It was worse.

In a meme that took off after the 90 minutes of screaming, interrupting and insults ended, celebrities and others began posting comparisons of what horrible things in their lives they'd now rank better than the debate.

Mark Hamill , aka Luke Skywalker, appeared in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, which featured singing Wookiees wearing Snuggies and a Jefferson Starship hologram jam band, yet he declared that the debate was worse.

As of Wednesday morning, Hamill's tweet declaring "that debate was the worst thing I've ever seen & I was in The Star Wars Holiday Special" has been liked more than 679,000 times and retweeted 101,000 times.

Hamill wasn't alone. Others users chimed in, claiming the debate was worse than terrible events in their own pasts.

"That was the worst thing I've ever seen, and I wrote Fantastic Four," tweeted writer-producer Jeremy Slater.

"It was the worst thing I have ever experienced and I made out with a duck," wrote Howard the Duck star Lea Thompson.

Others joined in, including Justin Marks, who wrote the much-criticized 2009 film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

And even those of us who never made a film could find a painful comparison. "That was the worst thing I've seen and I played E.T. on the Atari 2600 as a kid," wrote one Twitter user.

As you can see from our roundups of memes from Tuesday night, the debate has also been compared with a Real Housewives reunion and "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck." Start combing your past for more bad things. Another presidential debate is set for Oct. 15. 

New Movies Coming in 2023 From Marvel, Netflix, DC and More

See all photos