Update: Donald Trump’s Reddit “Ask Me Anything” got off to an enthusiastic start on Wednesday night, with over 24,000 comments by the time the GOP candidate signed off shortly after 8:30 p.m.
“This is going to be SO huge and I’m looking forward to answering your questions,” he wrote when the thread opened at 6:30. “I promise you, I'll answer all the questions I can. I want to do BIG things for America.”
Over the course of a little over an hour, Trump answered about a dozen questions on subjects like healthcare, immigration, education, policing and the role of money in politics, often in short two to three sentence answers.
Some of the initial questions focused on standard material for the campaign— redditors inquiring about how soon after his election Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border would begin construction, or how Trump planned to address accusations of opponent Hillary Clinton’s alleged corruption. Others featured newer material for the campaign, with a number of questions on the American space program and how Trump planned to fit NASA into his stated campaign goal to "make America great again."
“Honestly I think NASA is wonderful! America has always led the world in space exploration,” Trump wrote in response to the latter question, from redditor oldie101.
Some of the questions were a little simpler.
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From the start, the organizers of the AMA took steps to prevent discord in the thread, saying in a separate post earlier in the day, “OUR PLACE, OUR RULES.” Moderators warned that they had taken extra security measures “to keep our community free from troublemakers” and were enforcing rules that banned “dissenters or SJWs [social justice warriors].” The AMA also curated questions, deleting any that came from accounts less than a month old — meaning that anyone not already part of the community who wanted to jump in to ask a question was out of luck.
Trump signed off after a little more than an hour of questions via a photo posted to his campaign Facebook showing him sitting before a laptop on a plane. “I am off to my rally in Toledo!” he wrote, before quickly coming back to answer a final few questions. “Had a great time answering questions on Reddit!”
Though he came back once for additional questions, no such luck for anyone who wants to catch up, as the post was locked shortly after the end of the AMA. You'll just have to peruse the comments and wonder what might have been.
This story was originally published on July 25, 2016.
Have a burning question for Donald Trump?
Here's your chance to ask it.
The Republican presidential nominee plans to participate in an "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit on Wednesday evening.
The AMA, available at this link, will begin at 6:30 p.m. Trump is expected to begin fielding questions at about 7 p.m., according to his campaign.
The online Q&A comes a week after Trump formally secured his party's nomination — and in the midst of the four-day Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The AMA will happen the same evening President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden address Democrats in Philadelphia.
Trump isn't the first White House hopeful to engage with redditors. Obama participated in an AMA of his own during the 2012 campaign. Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has yet to host an AMA during the campaign, though she has left comments on the platform.