Donald Trump reassured the audience at the Republican presidential debate Thursday night that the size of his hands – and the size of his penis – is perfectly fine.

Donald Trump’s Hands

Trump’s hands became a literal subject of debate after his competitor in the race for the White House, Sen. Marco Rubio, made a joke about them at a rally last weekend. “He’s always calling me Little Marco. And I’ll admit he’s taller than me. He’s like 6’2, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2,” Rubio said in Virginia on Sunday. “And you know what they say about men with small hands?” Rubio asked, demurring to finish the oft-retold penis joke. “You can’t trust them.”

Of course, Trump’s ego prevented him from letting the slight go, and brought it up during the Fox News debate. “He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I’ve never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands?” Trump asked, raising his hands above the podium to offer proof.

“And, he referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small,'” Trump continued, adding with a wink, “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

Following the debate, reporters asked about the “something else” remark, which everyone took to be a reference to his penis. Depending on whom he was talking to, Trump either reaffirmed his remark – or he claimed that he was only talking about his hands.

After going hand-to-hand with a local reporter to prove the size of his hands, Trump said triumphantly, “See? Look! Hah! My hands are fine,” adding cheerfully, “And the other thing, I can tell you, it’s fine.”

But, while talking to CNN, he rejected the notion that he would be so crass as to defend the size of his penis while debating to become the next President of the United States. “No, I only made a joke about my hands. I have very powerful hands,” he told CNN’s Dana Bush, who insisted he’d gone further than that. “Look at these hands. Aren’t they beautiful? I have very powerful hands, large hands. But no, I think it was a good moment.”

Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, echoing Trump’s sentiments, laughed, “It was a great moment, ok?”

In his short chat with Bash, as in his remarks on the debate stage, Trump also claimed that the size of his hands had never been called into question before. That claim, however, is definitely false. A number of years ago, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter referred to the real estate mogul as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in an article for Spy magazine. The jab, as with the current one, did not go unnoticed by Trump.

“To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump,” Graydon wrote back in November. “There is always a photo of him—generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers.”

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