Bill Clinton Loves Balloons

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Part of a series on 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary. [View Related Entries]

About

Bill Clinton Loves Balloons refers to the former United States president's exuberant reaction to the celebratory balloon drop after Hillary Clinton formally accepted the nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in late July 2016.

Origin

On July 28th, 2016, the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination for president in the upcoming election in November. Shortly afterwards, she was joined onstage by her husband and former President of the United States Bill Clinton, her running mate Tim Kaine and several staffers, at which point around 100,000 red, blue and white balloons were released from the ceiling of the venue to celebrate the conclusion of the convention.

As photojournalists flocked to the stage to capture the celebration of Democratic party officials, Bill Clinton, and to a lesser extent, Hillary, were seen reacting to the balloons with child-like awe.

Spread

The internet immediately began cracking jokes about Bill's reaction. One instance, tweeted by @ingridostby,^[1] made Bill look as if he were trying to get Hillary's attention; the tweet gained over 64,000 retweets and 133,000 likes in less than a week (shown below).

While tweeters continued to crack jokes,^[3]^[4] Buzzfeed^[2] jumped on the trend and published "17 Pictures Of Bill Clinton Realizing That Balloons Exist." Media outlets including The Verge,^[5] Vogue,^[9] The Cut,^[6] and more published articles devoted to Bill's reaction, while Huffington Post^[7] and MTV News^[8] tweeted the video. On the /r/pics subreddit,^[10] Redditor nannerpusonpancakes submitted a gallery of the Clintons' reactions to the DNC balloon drop. The post has 4,822 points (76% Upvotes) as of August 2nd, 2016.