Hillary Clinton inspired a lot of eye-rolling Thursday with a reference to the summer Olympics in a campaign speech on her economic agenda.

The moment occurred as the Democratic presidential nominee took a shot at Donald Trump for his approach to free trade.

"Mr. Trump may talk a big game on trade, but his approach is based on fear, not strength. Fear that we can't compete with the rest of the world, even when the rules are fair," Clinton said during a campaign rally in Warren, Michigan. "Fear that our country has no choice but to hide behind walls.

"If Team USA was as fearful as Trump, [Olympic athletes] Michael Phelps and Simone Biles would be cowering in the locker room, afraid to come out and compete," she added to laughter and applause. "Instead, they're winning gold medals. America isn't afraid to compete."

Her Twitter account repeated the remark immediately, and in doing so elicited groans from social media users, many of whom are in media.

"Please stop," said the Atlantic's David Graham.

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski added, "not your best work."

"These speech writers are so terrible," said the Washington Free Beacon's Elizabeth Harrington.

Mediaite's Alex Griswold quipped, "Get it? It's topical."

"Swing and a miss," said USA Today's Charlotte Wilder.

Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch added, "This is a terrible tweet."

His colleague Kenny Ducey said simply, "delete your account."

Even if Clinton's quip flopped with media, it seems it was only a matter of time before she made a specific, topical reference to the summer Olympics during a campaign event.

"[T]he campaigns will try to integrate important Olympic events into their social media messages, particularly if U.S. athletes win a gold in a given event," Kyle Kopko, who teaches political science at Elizabethtown College, predicted in an interview with the Washington Examiner last week.

"The candidates will want to congratulate U.S. participants and try to appear presidential when doing so," he said.

Alberta professor and sports historian Stacy Lorenz told the Examiner the same thing.

"If the U.S. team has a successful Olympics, and tops the medal standings — and there is no reason to believe otherwise — then both Clinton and Trump will try to turn that to their advantage, and ride that wave of patriotism," he said.

The Democratic presidential candidate's campaign has invested a significant amount of cash into appealing to the Olympics audience.

"During the three weeks of Olympics coverage, [Clinton's] campaign is spending $8 million on the national NBC network, $1.1 million more on affiliated cable channels Bravo, USA and MSNBC and $4.5 million on local affiliates in key presidential battleground states such as Florida," the Associated Press reported.

The Trump campaign has spent exactly zero dollars on Olympic television advertising, according to a survey released by Deep Root Analytics.

The billionaire businessman hasn't purchased any television advertising since May, and his campaign has yet to reserve airtime for the remainder of the summer and fall, according to the Chicago Tribune.