A peculiar war on social media was going on at the same time that the two “fighters” for the presidency of the USA were debating.

Millions of Americans tuned in to watch the debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on their television screens on Tuesday. At the same time, a second battle was taking place on social media.

From the first moment of the debate, the Democrats began to publish videos and photos.

Trump’s repetition of a claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats probably inspired the most reaction.

Team with title “eat dogs”quickly went viral on the X social media platform, with thousands of posts — including many confused by the quote’s relevance.

As the debate ended, Harris scored the ultimate online victory. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” Taylor Swift told her 280 million Instagram followers on Tuesday. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she’s fighting for rights,” she wrote.

Check out this Instagram post.

Post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

The post already had over 4.3 million ‘likes’ on Instagram just two hours after it was posted.

Social media are playing an even bigger role in this year’s election cycle than in the past, political operatives say.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have drafted content creators, or influencers, to promote information about their party’s policies and candidates.

“(Social media) is both what people think and shapes what people think,” said Shannon McGregor, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Overall, Trump far outpaces Harris and her campaign in terms of followers.

The Harris campaign’s official Kamala HQ account has 1.3 million followers on X, compared to the Trump campaign’s 2.4 million, for example. However, her campaign has received over 100 million likes on her TikTok videos compared to Trump’s 44 million.

The Trump campaign and his supporters followed his response as he discussed Harris’ economic plan, calling it simplistic and a copy of President Joe Biden’s presidential agenda.

“Run, find, run,” Trump said, referring to a popular book series used to teach children to read in decades past. The term was quickly trending in X.

Harris put Trump on the defensive Tuesday with a series of attacks on abortion limits, his fitness for office and his myriad legal troubles, analysts said. But the Trump campaign, and Trump himself, were quick to declare victory on social media after it was over.

“People are talking about a big win tonight,” Trump said on his Facebook account after the teleconference.