"We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good" — this is a line from President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech, which seemed to have inspired House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's clapback.
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After POTUS's call for unity, Pelosi stood and applauded toward him in such a way that Trump critics immediately suggested that she was trolling the president.
Comic Patton Oswalt happened to come up with his own name for the now-viral clap:
One netizen alleged that Democratic congresswomen, who made a statement of solidarity in matching "suffragette white" outfits to symbolise women's rights, were waiting for Pelosi's signal to start applauding:
But it was not just the clap (seemingly rife with sarcasm) that has garnered so much attention: one Twitterian suggested that Pelosi was acting unprofessionally as she kept looking at her papers instead of the president:
Others, however, poked fun at the situation, assuming that she might have obtained an "advance copy" of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with the Kremlin:
Whatever was on the paper, there was no shortage of suggestions from curious netizens:
Many social media users pointed out that Pelosi refused to applaud when it came to cancer research or unemployment statistics…
…while one netizen tweeted a photo of Trump's predecessor Barack Obama and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, who also seemed reluctant to stand and clap to defend Pelosi:
A fellow Twitterian alluded to the stalemate between Democrats and Republicans over Trump's proposal to build a protective wall on the country's southern border with Mexico to stem the flow of illegal migrants:
Donald Trump was initially scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address on 29 January, however, Pelosi postponed it out of security concerns due to the fact the US government was in the middle of the country's longest partial shutdown.
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The 35-day shutdown began on 22 December after Democratic lawmakers refused to endorse Trump's proposal to allocate $5.7 billion to erect a wall on the US southern border to stop migrants from entering the country illegally.