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The fly in the hair of Republican Mike Pence was at times more discussed than the content of the TV debate
Photo: ERIC BARADAT / AFP
It was not discussed in the TV duel, but there were viewers who celebrated a fly as the true winner of the evening debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris: In the exchange of blows between the two candidates for the office of US Vice President, a fly opened the head of Republican Pence caused amusement and all sorts of ridicule on social media.
The animal sat on Pence's white hair and remained there for a few minutes.
On the Internet, users outdid each other with word games, and new accounts were set up, including a Twitter account called MikePenceFly, which quickly had tens of thousands of followers.
Some criticized the fact that it says a lot about the TV duel when an insect causes more discussion than the content of the candidates.
"Okay, this is a really important debate, but no one will remember anything but this fly," wrote one Twitter user.
The Democratic politician Jason Kander jokingly recommended that the fly go into "quarantine" immediately - a reference to the large number of corona cases in the White House after President Trump was infected.
Our US correspondents have analyzed the TV debate.
You can read the text here.
The "New York Times" journalist Taylor Lorenz shared a screenshot showing dozens of newly created accounts playing with the words "pence" and "flies".
"I was hoping we would have evolved on Twitter, but unfortunately," she commented.
And, like many others, alluded to the fact that there was a more important debate than that about flying on the heads of vice-presidents.
Some of the comments were crude: the Lincoln Project, a group of conservative Trump opponents, wrote on Twitter: "How fitting that a fly lands on Mike Pence's head while he is spreading more sh ..."
Trump's election challenger Joe Biden used the episode for an ironic appeal for election donations: The Democratic presidential candidate posted a photo of himself with a fly swatter on Twitter and wrote: "Contribute five dollars and help this election campaign fly" - "fly" and " Fly "are the same word in English.
Biden's campaign team immediately offered a fly swatter for ten dollars with the inscription "Truth over Flies" (truth instead of flies) - another play on words: from the English "flies" it is only a small step to "lies".
Biden regularly promises in the election campaign that he will rely on the truth and not on lies in order to present himself as an alternative to Trump.
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