Former President Donald Trump raised eyebrows after he went off on a tangent about how you can't buy fly paper anymore during a speech in Clive, Iowa.
You totally can purchase fly paper, by the way—it's not difficult to find, whether you walk into a hardware store or order it online. But that fact appeared to escape Trump, who was interrupted by flies as he spoke about the Israel-Hamas war to an audience of his supporters.
Trump expressed his intention to establish strict screening procedures for immigrants, vowing not to allow anyone into the country if they sympathize with organizations like Hamas or hold extremist views. But the flies quickly stole his attention.
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
Trump said:
"The people who sympathize with [Hamas] are sick. They're sick and they're evil and not going to be fixed. You're not going to turn them into wonderful people one day."
[as flies buzz around him] "I didn't know you had flies in Iowa! I hate flies!"
The audience laughed and Trump, ever the showman, predicted that he might face backlash for his comments due to "cruelty to animals."
He added:
"You know, I was at a place the other day and it was a beautiful place but they had, like, flies and I said, 'Get fly paper!' and they said, 'Sir, we're not allowed to sell it anymore because of cruelty to animals."
"They actually said that. I don't know, can you get fly paper? It used to be great, right? They said, 'You can't do thay anymore, sir. It's cruelty.'"
"What the hell is going on with this country?"
Unsurprisingly, Trump's fly-related remarks swiftly drew ridicule on social media, with many questioning the veracity of his story and offering their own humorous takes on the incident.
Trump is of course known for going off on absurd tangents during his rallies and media appearances.
Last week, he once again came under fire for his longtime feud with wind turbines, dedicating time to blaming them for why “we see whales washing up on shore."
At the time he made these remarks, Trump was in the middle of justifying why the Israel-Hamas war would have happened under his watch—though it took him over an hour to bring up the conflict in the days since Hamas launched a terror campaign that has resulted in at least 1,400 Israeli deaths.
