IN MEMES | Candidates for US vice-president square off but a fly steals the show

Mike Pence and Kamala Harris traded verbal blows in a US vice-presidential debate but it was a fly that made all the buzz online.

In the debate on Tuesday, Vice-President Pence defended Donald Trump's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I want the American people to know that from the very first day President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.

He went on to claim that presidential candidate Joe Biden's plan to address the pandemic “reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way, it looks a little bit like plagiarism.”

Democratic nominee for vice-president Harris said that Americans had witnessed “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country”.

“Here are the facts: 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. One in five businesses are closed. We're looking at front-line workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers.”

The fly made its entrance while law enforcement was the hot topic of the debate, finding a home on Pence's head for more than two minutes.

The politician was unfazed and left it alone until it finally flew away, but the moment was not lost on social media users who flooded timelines with their reactions.

Soon Pence, the debate and the fly were dominating the Twitter trends list, as South Africans joined in on jokes and memes being made about the incident.

While Trump tweeted that his vice-president had “won big”, many claimed it was the fly that was the real winner.