Barack Obama brought up the weirdness of Donald Trump’s obsession with crowd size in front of around 50,000 people in Chicago on Tuesday, ribbing the other former president in his speech on the second night of the Democratic National Convention.
“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,” Obama said. “There’s the childish nicknames. The crazy conspiracy theories. This weird obsession with crowd size.”
The 63-year-old then made what The New York Times characterized as “a notably suggestive gesture” with his hands, moving them apart and then closer together again. Some people thought he was mocking the size of Trump’s hands, others suggested it was something more personal.
ADVERTISEMENT
The crowd erupted, laughing hysterically for several moments as Obama smiled briefly.
“It just goes on and on and on,” he added.
In recent weeks, Trump has loudly raged about the size of the crowds he draws, declaring them much larger than his rival’s despite photo evidence to the contrary.
“The fact that Kamala Harris is pulling such huge crowds is really getting under his—let’s call it—skin,” comedian Stephen Colbert cracked on The Late Show last week.
Obama’s hand signals harkened back to Trump’s own boastful rhetoric—which often accompanied bombastic gestures of his own.
In one notable instance Trump, during a debate in 2016, addressed an attack on the size of his hands by Sen. Marco Rubio, holding up his hands conspicuously.
“Look at those hands! Are they small hands?” Trump intoned. “And... he referred to my hands. If they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”
