#HillaryFly

Submission 13,164

Part of a series on 2016 United States Presidential Election Debates. [View Related Entries]

About

#HillaryFly is the nickname given to a house fly that landed on the face of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the second 2016 United States presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri on October 9th, 2016. Shortly after its on-screen appearance, many viewers on the social media became fixated with the fly, spawning a series of satirical jokes involving the fly and both of the candidates.

Origin

On the night of October 9th, 2016, at approximately 9:19 p.m. (EST), a house fly landed on the face of Hillary Clinton during her two-minute response to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's counter-accusations of misogyny against her husband and former United States president Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1999.

CLINTON: Well, first, let me start by saying that so much of what he's just said is not right, but he gets to run his campaign, [a fly lands on her face] any way he chooses. He gets to decide what he wants to talk about.

Spread

Within the very minute of the fly's primetime on-screen debut, a slew of jokes about the bug's unannounced on-screen cameo began to surface on Twitter, as well as a series of satirical remarks aimed at Hillary Clinton from her detractors and critics.

At 9:20 p.m., Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal tweeted a tongue-in-cheek PSA message about the fly. By 9:25 p.m., at least four novelty Twitter accounts dedicated to the fly had been launched under the names Hillary Clinton Fly,^[2] "2016DebateFly,^[3] DebateFly^[4] and TheDebateFly^[5]