Twitterati slam U.S. Vice-President’s gaffe

In a goof-up gone viral, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence touched something he should not have as he visited the NASA headquarters.

Mr. Pence was at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday. At one point, Mr. Pence was guided to a piece of gear with a sign that identified it as “critical space flight hardware” and a warning in bright, red capital letters: do not touch.

Mr. Pence placed his left palm flat on it, anyway, as cameras clicked away. One of the people in the picture is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The rest is meme and tweet history.

“Good to know our vice president has the self control of a sugar charged 3rd grader on a field trip,” wrote someone with the handle @KentoTFH. “Again administration blaming someone else,” wrote @PatStevens2.

Mr. Pence later sent out a tweet in which he said he was sorry. “Sorry @NASA ... @MarcoRubio dared me to do it!,” Mr. Pence wrote. NASA put out a tweet saying it was no big deal, that the hardware needed to be cleaned anyway.