Vice President JD Vance related a below-the-belt joke by Donald Trump, saying he wouldn’t publicly “embarrass” another politician by talking about his small shoe size.
Speaking at a Christmas party at his residence to honor movie star Sylvester Stallone, Vance launched into a bizarre anecdote from a meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump made a joke about men’s anatomy relating to their shoe sizes.
“People often ask me what it’s like to be the Vice President of the United States. And a lot of that is exactly what you’d expect it to look like…but sometimes you get these behind-the-scenes moments that I will never, ever forget for the rest of my life,” Vance began.
He, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and an unnamed politician were in the Oval Office discussing something “really, really important” when Trump paused the discussion to say, according to Vance: “There’s something much more important: Shoes.”
Trump then peered over the Resolute Desk to tell Vance and Rubio that they have “s****y shoes,” the vice president continued. The crowd erupted with laughter.
“We got to get you better shoes,” the president apparently said before pulling out a shoe catalogue.
Trump promised to gift each of the men four pairs of shoes so asked for their shoe sizes.
“He says, ‘Marco, what’s your shoe size?’ And Marco’s apparently an 11 and a half. He says, ‘JD, what’s your shoe size?’ My shoe size is 13,” the vice president said.
“Then [Trump] asked this politician, who I won’t embarrass, what his shoe size is, and he says: ‘Seven,’” Vance continued, taking a pause as the audience laughed. “The President, he kind of leans back in his chair and says, ‘You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.’”
The vice president then referenced his wife, Usha Vance, who was standing next to him, and joked: “We won’t ask the Second Lady for comment on that particular topic.”
Years earlier, Trump and Rubio had barbed over a similar topic as they vied to become the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.
“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 at a Virginia rally in 2016. “And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”
At a debate in early March that year, Trump rejected the suggestion his hand size implied anything else about his anatomy. “He referred to my hands – ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee,” Trump said.
