Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign has capitalized on an incident from Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate. At one point during the event, a fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head and stayed there for nearly two minutes.
Within an hour of the debate’s conclusion, the Biden campaign listed a $10 fly swatter for sale that says “Truth Over Flies” on it, Bloomberg Quint reported. Just after midnight, Biden campaign staffer Zach McNamara tweeted they had already sold 15,000 fly swatters.
“Lots of buzz about our fly swatter, we’ve already sold 15,000,” McNamara wrote.
Bloomberg reported that the campaign had sold out of the fly swatters by morning.
“Though mocking merchandise has been more of a Trump campaign specialty, the Biden campaign has upped its game recently, turning around ‘I Paid More Taxes Than Donald Trump’ buttons the same day the New York Times reported he had paid just $750 in taxes some years and none in others,” the outlet reported.
Trump previously responded to the Times report that he only paid $750 in federal income taxes by calling the report “Fake News.”
“I paid millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits,” Trump said at the time, as reported by The Daily Wire. “Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged—I have very little debt compared to the value of assets.”
Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, also said in a statement that the Times report was inaccurate.
“The New York Times’ story is riddled with gross inaccuracies. Over the past decade the President has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government,” Garten said. “While we tried to explain this to the Times, they refused to listen and rejected our repeated request that they show us any of the documentation they purport to be relying on to substantiate their claims.”
The Trump campaign has famously capitalized on random, memorable incidents in the past. In July 2019, the re-election campaign started selling red plastic straws with Trump’s name on them after Democrat-controlled cities across the country began banning them based on a decade-old, dubious study claiming they hurt the environment. The campaign sold the straws for $15 for a pack of 10, The Daily Wire previously reported.
RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann reported that the campaign had originally ordered 200,000 straws but sold out of them quickly and had to order more. Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, told RealClear that the “paper straw is universally hated.”
In 2016, the Trump campaign also sold items that said “Deplorable” on them after Hillary Clinton used the word to smear Trump supporters.
In addition to the straws, the Trump campaign also has sold “Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff” T-Shirts — a knock at the Democrat congressman from California who has claimed for two years to have “ample” and “more than circumstantial” evidence that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia. In addition, “I Spy Trump” T-shirts and tank tops have also been sold, a reference to the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign. The campaign also has sold mugs that say “WITCH HUNT” on them, “Collusion Delusion” shirts, and “NO COLLUSION” beverage coolers.