Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose own 2004 run for the White House ended in a scream that's been captured for all time in various YouTube clips, lobbed an absurdist tweet during Monday's debate that's been embraced just as eagerly by Twitter.

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With zero proof of anything untoward, Dean just threw this out to his 37,000+ Twitter followers. More than 23,000 retweets and 33,000+ likes later, the farcical bit is still going strong.

Pretty soon, this happened:

Then this:

Then a sub-debate emerged:

BTW if you missed this back in the day: