Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is rolling out a debate day ad aimed at riling former President Donald Trump.
In the video, former President Barack Obama, whom Trump despises, suggests that the Republicans’ “obsession with crowd size” has a deeper meaning.
The campaign spot uses a clip from Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, in which the former president makes a hand gesture to suggest that Trump’s “you-know-what” has a problem with his height.
“This weird obsession with crowd size,” Obama said, drawing screams and cheers from the DNC crowd as he waved his hands back and forth. “It just goes on and on and on.”
From there, the ad flashes to empty stands at a Trump rally, as crickets chirp and someone yawns loudly. It then cuts to a packed room in front of Harris, with Obama saying, “America is ready for a new chapter. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
A new ad from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, which debuted on debate day, shows former President Barack Obama gesticulating during the Democratic National Convention, suggesting that former President Donald Trump’s obsession with crowd size has a deeper meaning.
Trump is furious that Harris is drawing crowds similar to Obama’s. It’s a far cry from the small, COVID-conscious events President Joe Biden has held during his campaign against Republicans.
At last month’s Democratic National Convention, Harris trolled Trump by packing the Fiserv Forum, the site of the Republican National Convention in July, with some 15,000 of her supporters in Milwaukee, while there was also a full house cheering on Democrats at the convention site in Chicago.
As for the below-the-belt attack, Obama is not the first politician to go down this road.
During Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, GOP rival Sen. Marco Rubio went there in a last-ditch effort to steal support from the real estate developer in the Republican primaries.
“And you know what they say about men with small hands?” Rubio asked at a campaign rally.
He paused for a moment, leaving his supporters wondering if he was drawing attention to the magnitude of something else.
“You can’t trust them, you can’t trust them,” the Florida senator said at the time.
At one point, the ad flashes to empty seats at a Trump rally. Trump has complained about Vice President Kamala Harris drawing large crowds, especially after the small, COVID-conscious events President Joe Biden held during his successful 2020 campaign against Trump
During Harris’ 30-second commercial, only Trump’s hand is visible in one shot. Former rival, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, had ridiculed Trump’s hand size, as had former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter
In Harris’ 30-second commercial, only Trump’s hand is visible in one shot.
Mocking the size of Trump’s hands dates back to the 1980s. Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair, called Trump a “short-fingered countryman” in a 1988 issue of Spy Magazine.
Carter brought up the insult again in a Editorial letter from October 2015 in Vanity Fairand told his readers that the then presidential candidate had “a skin of gossamer-thin material.”
“To this day, I occasionally receive an envelope from Trump. It always includes a photo of him—usually a tear-off from a magazine. In every photo, he has drawn circles around his hand in a gold Sharpie in a valiant attempt to emphasize the length of his fingers,” wrote Carter, now an associate editor of Air Mail.
“I almost feel sorry for the poor man, because I still find his fingers abnormally short,” the veteran magazine editor concluded.