Donald Trump has passionately defended the size and elegance of his hands in a lengthy interview with
The Washington Post — saying a cheap insult by Marco Rubio had led people to believe they were deformed.
"I don't want people to go around thinking that I have a problem," the Republican presidential front-runner said in a sit-down with the newspaper's editorial board.
"Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But I felt I should respond because everybody was talking about it."
The question of Trump's hands first came up when Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida made a crack about their small appearance and inferred that corresponded to the size of his genitalia.
Rubio's shock-jock putdown made Trump go ballistic and had him vigorously defending himself in the private-parts department, insisting, "I guarantee you there's no problem, I guarantee you."
And he defended himself yet again this week, when The Post brought up the hands controversy during their one-on-one on his presidential platform.
"You are smart and you went to a good school. Yet you are up there and talking about your hands and the size of your private parts" one editorial board member said.
"No, no. No, no. I am not doing that … No, I had to do it … Now I have my hands, I hear, on [the cover of] The New Yorker," Trump said, referring to the magazine's unflattering cartoon depiction of his fingers as stubby digits.
"A hand with little fingers coming out of a stem. Like, little. Look at my hands. They're fine … My hands are normal hands."
And he blamed Rubio, who has since dropped out of the GOP competition for goading him.
"During a debate, [Rubio] was losing, and he said, 'Oh, he has small hands and therefore, you know what that means.' This was not me. This was Rubio … Okay? So, he started it," Trump said.
"A couple of days later … I was on line shaking hands with supporters, and one of the supporters got up and he said, 'Mr. Trump, you have strong hands. You have good-sized hands.'
"And then another one would say, 'You have great hands, Mr. Trump, I had no idea.' I said, "What do you mean?" He said, 'I thought you were like deformed, and I thought you had small hands."'
The controversy ballooned so dramatically, Trump explained, that concerned supporters began writing to ask how his hands were feeling.
"My hands are fine. You know, my hands are normal. Slightly large, actually. In fact, I buy a slightly smaller than large glove, okay?" Trump to The Post.
"[Rubio] wanted to do his Don Rickles stuff and it didn't work out … [but] I don't want people to go around thinking that I have a problem."
Asked by the editorial board if his responses to the hand controversy were presidential, Trump responded: "I don't know if it was presidential."
But he said he was ready to rescue Rubio as he was trashed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during one debate.
"When Christie made him look bad … I had this big strong powerful hand ready to grab him, because I thought he was going to faint. And everybody took it fine," he said.
"Whether it was presidential or not I can't tell you. I can just say that what he said was a lie."
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