Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was just minding her own business, giving a speech at a scrap-recycling conference at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas on Thursday, when suddenly a shoe came sailing through the air.
Clinton managed to dodge the footwear and was not injured, nor even fazed. "What is that, a bat?" she asked. "Was that a bat? Is that somebody throwing something at me?” She even used the moment as an opportunity to crack a joke: “Is that part of Cirque du Soleil?”
Unlike President George W. Bush, who was infamously assaulted by an Iraqi reporter's shoe in 2008, Clinton was able to weave the incident back into her talk on recycling. “My goodness, I didn’t know solid waste management was so controversial," she said, before adding a dig at her attacker. "Thank goodness she didn’t play softball like I did.”
A representative for the event told the AP that the shoe-thrower, who was arrested on the spot, "was not affiliated with our organization and was not credentialed for this event."
This isn't Clinton's first run-in with a flying shoe. In 2012, Egyptian protestors pelted her motorcade with tomatoes and footwear in Alexandria. (Politico)