While many of the Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination were battling it out at last night’s debate, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick hosted a talk at Morehouse College.

Or, more accurately, he planned an event at the historically black college, but didn’t bother to stick around for the two people who showed up to hear him speak, CNN’s Annie Grayer reports.

“Governor @DevalPatrick was supposed to have an event at Morehouse College tonight,” she posted to Twitter with a picture of the meeting room filled with empty chairs. “An organizer with the college who planned the event told CNN that Patrick cancelled the event when he arrived and learned that he would not have an audience. (Note, two people came, not pictured)”

Folks online were ruthless.

“Those two were just looking for the bathroom,” Noobmaster69 tweeted.

“You could say his candidacy has really Devalved,” Andrew Solender added.

“The five billionaire Democrat donors that wanted him to run are very upset,” user “A lawyer that has been appointed to represent you” wrote.

“They’re not interested to show up themselves, or pay seat fillers,” xbmuz posted.

“Hopefully he gets the message,” PaDe. tweeted.

“If he had taken the two who showed up to a restaurant and had a real conversation – people might have been impressed that he cared that much and was humble enough to start small – and it would have given him a much better photo op than these empty chairs,” John Luiz wrote.

“Imagine if instead of saying ‘you’re not worth my time,’ he’d sat down with them and had a conversation like a human being,” Amir Talai added.

ABC News reporter Cheyenne Haslett posted a picture of the two students who came to the event waiting for Patrick to arrive. Haslett contends the 63-year-old was aware the two students were waiting on him when decided to ditch them.

“This was the @DevalPatrick event at @Morehouse College right around the time we were told he was 2 minutes away,” Haslett wrote. “It was a very empty room. A few minutes later, after the students notified the campaign that there were only a few students there, he cancelled.”

“The students who organized the event for Patrick, part of a club called New Deal Democrats,s aid they had 24 hours notice of the event. They said they took time from organizing the @SenSanders event here tomorrow to do this for Patrick’s campaign,” she wrote.

“After we’d been told by the students that he wasn’t coming, the campaign texted and said that the governor was late from a previous event and that they would reschedule at Morehouse because he had to make a flight.”

You Might Like
Learn more about RevenueStripe...

The poor turnout wasn’t exactly shocking. The event was scheduled for the same town at the same time as the fifth Democratic presidential debate, which Deval did not qualify for because of his late entry into the race last week.

So far, it hasn’t gone so well.

On Sunday, Patrick spoke at the Nevada Democrats’ “First in the West” fundraiser at Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, where the cavernous hall was filled with a lot more empty chairs and event workers than actual supporters.

“Last night @DevalPatrick addressed a nearly empty hall of @nvdems,” The Boston Globe’s Laura Krantz tweeted with a video. “The people who stayed like him, they said they wished he had run from the beginning.”