AVENUE Q Solves the Presidential Candidates' Great Puppet Debate

This just in: one of the burning issues from last night's debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump focused on which one of the Presidential candidates is a "puppet."

The mystery has been solved: they both are, as embodied by their furry likenesses in the long-running NY musical Avenue Q (pictured left).

In a rare instance of bipartisan agreement during this rancorous campaign season, puppets Clinton and Trump have issued this joint statement:

"Now that the debates are concluded, it can be revealed that Avenue Q's Presidential puppets worked secretly with the respective candidates during their debate prep," states Avenue Q spokesman Sam Rudy. "We challenged the candidates by mixing it up: on occasion Trump prepped with the Trump puppet as well as with the Clinton puppet, and vice versa. I think it is a testament to the success of that process that they publicly acknowledged puppets in their debate remarks. This goes a long way - it's bigly, actually - towards making puppets great again."

Rudy adds that it had been hoped that Vladimir Putin would participate in the debate prep and even the debate itself, however those plans were scrapped when it was discovered that candidate Trump has never met the Russian leader, thus giving an edge to Clinton, who confessed her own relationship with Putin is "complicated."

"With the debate schedule behind us, we are hoping the candidates and Mr. Putin will form an intimate theater party and see how Avenue Q deals with the relevant topics of this election: racism, unemployment, sexism, gay marriage, education, college tuition and porn. They might learn something.".