People have been mocking Donald Trump’s abnormally small hands for decades. The matter of Trump’s hand-size rose to the level of a full-fledged campaign controversy during the 2016 Presidential campaign. One of Trump’s opponents needled Trump for having small hands. Trump responded by insisting during a televised debate that his hands were not small (a demonstrably false claim) and boasting about the size of his penis (a claim that can only be judged in light of Trump’s overall credibility). The issue continued to bother Trump, prompting an extensive meditation by Trump about his hand size during a meeting with the Washington Post’s editorial board.
The exact size of Donald Trump’s hands has been a matter of public record since August of 2016, thanks to the reporting of Benjamin Svetkey at the Hollywood Reporter. Svetkey discovered a bronze cast of Trump’s hand on display at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, where it had been hanging since 1997. Trump’s hand measured 7.25 inches, which is smaller than the average male hand-size of 7.44 inches. Trump’s height is 6’2”, which is substantially taller than the average male height of 5’10”. The Washington Post determined that 85% of American men and approximately 30% of American women have larger hands than Trump.
Are you still skeptical? Good! At RAGEPATH, we want to encourage skepticism, critical thinking, and rigorous methodology. So, let’s walk together through the factual record – with citations that will allow you to check our work.
Trump’s short fingers have been an object of public ridicule for decades.
The insult about Trump’s hand-size appears to have originated in the pages of Spy magazine, which repeatedly dubbed Donald as a “short-fingered vulgarian.” As Donald was divorcing Ivana in February of 1990, Spy issued a special inset that would allow readers to paste stickers over past references to Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” with a new term: “The Seventies Style Swinging Single Donald Trump.” The term’s invention is often attributed to Graydon Carter, the current editor of Vanity Fair. Carter himself has used the term “we” in describing the phrase’s invention, so we believe the actual author is not really certain. The term “short-fingered vulgarian” was first published in January of 1988.
Over at Spy — long cruelly obsessed with both Donald and Ivana — they’re planning an insert for the March issue. Some stickers. Spy used to refer to Trump as “the short-fingered vulgarian.” The stickers will change that. “You’ll be able to go back to past issues of Spy and cover that over,” says Carter, “with a new description: ‘The Seventies Style Swinging Single Donald Trump.'”
(Washington Post, February 14, 1990)
Marco Rubio taunted Trump about his small hands after repeated insults from Trump.
In 2016, Trump’s hand-size was raised as a campaign issue by Marco Rubio – a Republican candidate that Trump had demeaned as “Little Marco.” Rubio explicitly mocked Trump’s hand size at a campaign rally held on February 28, 2016, telling the crowd “you know what they say about men with small hands…” Rubio let the implied joke about Trump’s tiny penis hang in the air for a moment before dodging the joke by adding “… You can’t trust them.”
At rallies in recent days, Trump also has repeatedly called Rubio “Little Marco” or “Little Rubio.” Rubio hit back Sunday night by mocking Trump at a rally at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., saying the businessman has tiny hands. “You know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said, pausing for laughter. “You can’t trust them.”
(Washington Post, March 1, 2016)
Trump denied having small hands or a small “something else” during a televised debate.
Donald Trump directly addressed Rubio’s charges about his small hands during a televised Republican debate aired on Fox News on March 3, 2016. (Trump’s exact words can be found at the 6:40 mark in this video.) Trump claimed that Rubio had “hit my hands” which, “nobody has ever hit my hands, I’ve never heard of this one.” Trump then displayed his hands to the audience, inviting viewers to judge their size. Trump added that small hands implied “something else” must be small, but assured the audience “I guarantee you, there’s no problem.”
So many unbelievable things have happened in this presidential campaign that, at this point, it’s getting hard to keep track or even be shocked anymore. But every once in awhile, something happens that makes you pause, step back and realize just how insane this ride is we’re on.
The opening of Thursday’s Republican Fox News debate was one of those moments. Donald Trump, who among other things had been under fire from his opponents for the size of his hands — a decades-old insecurity for The Donald — went there on what everyone (okay, most everyone) in America thinks when they hear someone has small hands.
If you say you have small hands, you know what that means, he asked rhetorically. And then he said this: “I guarantee you, there’s no problem.” […]
But let’s hit pause for a moment and step back to appreciate what just happened. The Republican presidential front-runner just insinuated to America he is, without a doubt, well-endowed.
(Washington Post, Amber Phillips, March 4, 2016)
Several weeks later, Trump continued to deny that his hands were unusually small.
The size of Trump’s hands became a matter of increased speculation following the GOP debate on March 3, 2016. Trump was asked at a meeting with the Washington Post’s editorial board whether he regretted having brought the matter up at the debate. Trump responded characteristically, defending the size of his hands and telling the reporters that his hands were “normal” and “slightly large, actually.” Trump claimed that supporters on the campaign trail had been surprised that his hands weren’t “deformed.” Trump claimed his remarks at the debate had ended speculation about the size of his hands.
Fifty-two minutes into Donald Trump’s discussion of weighty issues with The Washington Post’s editorial board came an interlude about his hands. “Normal,” the Republican presidential front-runner insisted. “Strong.” “Good size.” “Great.” “Fine.” “Slightly large, actually.”
Trump was asked whether he regretted talking about the size of his hands — and making an unmistakable allusion to his genitalia — at a recent debate. The billionaire mogul blamed the episode on Marco Rubio, whose campaign was struggling at the time, and said the Florida senator was reviving a criticism leveled at him over the years by Graydon Carter, a New York society figure and editor of Vanity Fair. (“Short-fingered vulgarian,” is how Carter has often referred to Trump.) […]
Meeting with The Post’s editorial board, Trump said, “I had no choice” but to respond to Rubio’s derision. “My hands are normal hands,” he said. Recounting the feedback he was getting in the aftermath of Rubio’s jibe, Trump said, “I was on line shaking hands with supporters and one of the supporters said, ‘Mr. Trump, you have strong hands, you have good size hands.’ And then another one would say, ‘Oh, you have great hands, Mr. Trump. I had no idea.'” “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I thought you were, like, deformed. I thought you had small hands.'”
Trump also lamented the media coverage of his hands, including a cover illustration of The New Yorker, which Trump described as “a hand with little fingers coming out of a stem.” “I mean, people were writing, ‘How are Mr. Trump’s hands?’ My hands are fine,” Trump said. “My hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large-size glove, okay? But I did this because everybody was saying to me, ‘Oh, your hands are very nice, they’re normal.'”
Trump argued that he had to respond on the debate stage. “I don’t want people to go around thinking that I have a problem,” Trump said. “By saying that, I solved the problem.” Pressed on whether the move was presidential, Trump replied, “I don’t know if it’s presidential, honestly… I can just say that what [Rubio] said was a lie. Everybody, they wanted to do stories on my hands. After I said that, they never did.”
(Washington Post, March 21, 2016)
After months of speculation, Trump’s hand-size was finally determined – they’re small.
Sadly, the true size of Trump’s hands remained a subject of extensive public speculation. Massive investigative resources were deployed to resolve a mystery that could have been solved with a simple ruler. While it may not have been the wisest use of investigative resources and newspaper column inches, the answer was eventually found. In August of 2016, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that a bronze cast of Trump’s hand had been found hanging in public display at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. The cast had been hanging in public since 1997. The cast of Trump’s hand measured 7.25 inches, slightly smaller than the average male hand size of 7.44 inches. Trump’s height of 6’2”, four inches taller than the average male, means that his hands are even smaller proportionate to his size. Hollywood Reporter helpfully provided a PDF of Trump’s actual hand-outline that can be printed out and used to judge the hand’s size for yourself. Kim Soffen of the Washington Post determined that 85% of American men and approximately 30% of American women have larger hands than Trump.
It all started last spring, during the heat of the Republican primary, when Trump was taunting rival Marco Rubio by calling him “Little Marco.” The Florida senator struck back at a rally. […] For the first time in American history, penis size became an issue in a presidential campaign.
The story kept pundits and reporters busy for weeks, and even inspired the creation of a political action committee — Trump Has Tiny Hands PAC officially filed with the Federal Election Commission on March 7— with the sole purpose of discovering the real size of Trump’s hands. Rumors of a cement casting of Trump’s hands — literally concrete proof — began swirling in Chicago, where locals remembered that, in 1998, Trump and his children attended a press event for the opening of the nearly completed Trump International Hotel and Tower and were photographed having concrete molds of their hands made. At the time, it was reported that the castings would be incorporated into the construction of the tower. But last March, when the news site Vocativ sent reporters to the building to investigate, the hands were nowhere to be found (“Mysterious Disappearance of Donald Trump’s Cement Handprints,” shrieked the headline of Vocativ’s story).
Now, however, thanks to THR, the mystery of Trump’s hands can finally be solved. While the staff hasn’t found the lost concrete molds from Chicago, editors did learn that, in 1997, a team of wax figure artists from Madame Tussauds visited Trump’s office in Trump Tower in New York to take measurements and make impressions of various body parts — including his hands — to help them construct a life-size wax replica for the museum’s New York branch on 42nd Street. One of those handprints has been hiding in plain sight ever since: on a plaque on the wall as guests exit the museum. Tussauds won’t comment on why they’ve kept Trump’s hand on the wall for nearly 20 years — even though the Trump wax figure was retired from the collection in 2011 — but it’s clearly been a boon for business these past months, with scores of tourists flocking to the Times Square museum to compare digits with Trump’s.
The scientifically objective results: Trump does indeed have hands just below average size, particularly for a man standing 6-foot-2. According to various human anatomy websites, the average-height American adult male (5-foot-10) has an average hand size (measured from the tip of the middle finger to the wrist) of 7.44 inches. Trump’s measures 7.25 inches.
(Hollywood Reporter, August 3, 2016)
What do we know about Donald Trump’s penis?
(Daily Mail, November 8, 2016)
Mercifully, we know very little about the shape or size of Donald Trump’s penis. Trump declined an invitation to pose nude for Cosmopolitan in 1989. The magazine had offered to pay $50,000 to a charity designated by Trump if he would agree to a nude photo shoot for its cover. If the magazine had known then what we know now, they would have realized that Donald Trump doesn’t support charity. Americans wishing to speculate further on the matter must make an educated guess. Did Trump’s refusal to pose in the buff reflect the innate modesty of his personality? Or, did his refusal reflect the modesty of “something else?”
Donald Trump, never known for his shy, retiring ways, has turned down an offer from Helen Gurley Brown to appear nude in the 25th-anniversary edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. Well, it wouldn’t exactly have been an all-revealing nude. Editor Brown assured the wealthy developer he would be protected by a stack of books, a potted plant, a towel or something in the May issue. And Cosmo would pay $50,000 to Trump’s favorite charity. Trump ignored the provocative information that he was Cosmo readers’ choice as the sexy man they would most like to see featured in the nude. Burt Reynolds got a big career boost by appearing as a Cosmo centerfold in 1972, but Trump isn’t in movies yet so he doesn’t need the help. Flattered and amused, he wrote a kindly no-thanks to Brown. One wag suggested he didn’t want the world to see “Trump” tattooed on his backside.
(Washington Post, November 17, 1989)