Out of concern that she would otherwise appear small compared to Donald Trump, Democrat Kamala Harris will have a shorter podium than the Republican presidential nominee during Tuesday night's debate, Axios reported.
The different podium sizes will allow Harris to appear closer to the same stature as Trump in split-screen shots, according to the report.
"[I]t looks like the kids' table at Thanksgiving," a Trump campaign official told Axios.
At issue is one of the biggest height disparities among presidential nominees in U.S. history: Trump says he's 6 feet 3 inches tall; Harris is 5 feet 4 inches tall.
Of course, Harris said in an interview earlier this year, before becoming the Democrat nominee, that "with heels, which I always wear, I'm 5-foot-7 and a half, thank you very much."
Hillary Clinton, who is also 5 feet 4 inches tall, used a customized lectern during her debates with Trump in 2016 so that they would hover over their podiums by the same amount.
A similar predicament happened in 1988 when Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was 5 feet 9 inches, was worried about optics against the 6-foot-2-inch George Herbert Walker Bush.
"We built something like a pitcher's mound behind Dukakis' podium for him to step on," Frank Fahrenkopf, co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, told Axios.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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