The Truth About The Fly In Mike Pence's Hair During The Debate

What's the truth about the fly in Vice President Mike Pence's hair during the 2020 vice presidential debate? It was bad enough that everyone worried about the vice president having COVID-19 — and Pence looked pale. But the fly on the vice president was peak 2020. We did not have "fly stuck in the Vice President's hair" our bingo card! Twitter went wild about the bug, Now This reported. In fact, "The Fly" received over 500,000 tweets in just one hour, according to the outlet. The fly in the VP's hair also became a Twitter trend, engaging millions of Americans in the debate. 

New York Magazine reported that "an insect-related incident toward the end of the Pence-Harris debate may be the final takeaway from the Oct. 7, 2020 contest. With about 10 minutes left until the end of the debate, a fly landed on Pence's head and stayed there for a remarkable amount of time."

Read on to find out the truth about the fly in Pence's hair during the debate!

The fly on Mike Pence's head during the vice presidential debate not only created a Twitter tsunami — but it probably has far-reaching implications as well. New York Magazine pointed out that "the fly" incident is going to make President Donald Trump upset: "For the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force to have a fly — a known agent of contagion — to land on his head isn't the ideal viral image from a debate in which the vice president was tasked with making it look like his administration had the outbreak within its ranks under control."

Politico reported that the fly was the breakout star of the debate, noting "the fly remained on the vice president's head for about two minutes." Pence did not appear to notice the insect — but, if he did, he certainly did not acknowledge that it was there.

Naturally, the fly started its own Twitter handle after the debate, because this is 2020. @MikePenceFly is already internet famous, with over 8,000 followers.

While the fly on Mike Pence's head during the debate had Twitter rolling, Joe Biden's team worked hard into the night crafting fly-inspired tweets for their candidate. Just after the debate, Biden's Twitter account shared a picture of the candidate holding a fly swatter. The tweet read, "Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly." Just after, the Biden campaign began selling "Truth Over Flies" fly swatters on their website for a $10 donation to the campaign. At the time of writing, they are already sold out. Cue the drums, this dad joke has been MADE.

Sadly, it was all people could talk about, with even Mark Hamill, for example, tweeting, "[Mike Pence] consistently went over his allotted time, ignored questions he didn't like while asking questions of his own, condescendingly 'Pencesplained' so a woman could understand, tried to defend the indefensible & still, a fly got all the headlines!"

Alas, this isn't the first time that a fly has made front-page news and it will surely not be the last. Flies have overtaken debates, interviews, and more in the past. Each time, it means something different, depending on who is watching and how intensely they feel about the candidate dealing with a little bug.

Back in 2009, for example, President Barack Obama was giving an interview to CNBC when a fly started to buzz around him. The then-president squashed the little insect with his bare hands. It took him a second, and the network thankfully didn't cut it out of the footage, bu at the time, Obama opponents accused the president of either being too hard on the insect or suggested that it meant that he was a demon. Yes, really. And a year later, another fly buzzed around him, resulting in a now-viral photo of him with a fly on his upper lip, per NPR.

But if Obama's a demon, then all politicians in large arenas are, as the Mike Pence and Obama flies are just the beginning of insect invasions. Back in 2016, a fly landed on Hillary Clinton (also sparking demon conspiracy theories) during a presidential debate. She seemed to not notice it and let it sit until it finally lost interest in whatever her and Donald Trump were talking about at the time. But Trump wasn't spared either!

During a campaign event, eagle eyes caught a fly lounging in Trump's comb over, per the New York Post. Per the same outlet, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg also dealt with a fly situation while speaking at the 2020 Democratic convention. These things happen!