A video of Donald Trump being hit in the face by a boom mic has gone viral on social media this week, drawing attention to his striking seven-word reaction to the mishap.
The incident took place at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland while he was speaking with the media after delivering a speech at the Department of Justice, where he criticized the media for being against him since his return to the White House in January.
“These networks and these newspapers are really no different than the highly paid political operative,” he said during the presidential address.
“And it has to stop. It has to be illegal. It is influencing judges and it is really changing law and that just cannot be illegal.
“I don’t believe it is legal.”
Ironically, just a few hours of later, a member of the press clocked Trump in the face with a boom mic, as the Republican leader took a series of questions about the situation in the Middle East.
The live television moment saw one of the attending reporter’s hands slip, prompting the fluffy mic – often dubbed a ‘dead cat’ because of its resemblance to a fury friend – to plummet directly into 78-year-old Trump’s face.
In reaction, he closed his eyes and leaned away, with many spectators fearing what he might say back.
Thankfully for the journalist, however, Trump then began laughing off the excruciating moment.
“She just became a big story tonight,” he said of the mic operator.
“She just made television tonight,” the father-of-five continued. “Did you see that?”
However, all amusement aside, the moment has since sparked mass debate online, with many right-wing spectators pointing out that this incident could have posed a huge threat to Trump’s security.
“Where’s the secret service,” one questioned on X (formerly Twitter) in the hours that followed.
Another wondered whether the incident should be classed as ‘ass-au-lt on the president’. A third made the point that, whilst in this case it was not, the boom mic could have been ‘laced with a poison’ or ‘infected with the next pandemic’.
The same individual encouraged the mic to be ‘tested for all agents’ , suggesting that the recording equipment could have been tainted with the likes of ‘fentanyl, anthrax, herpes’.
Another social media user called for the reporting crew in question to be ‘arrested and all equipment seized and tested for biological weapons or poisons’, believing that the blunder could be ‘treated as an as-sassin-ation attempt’.