Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In all fairness, the latest installment of our phallocentric presidential politics began with Barack Obama’s taunt of Donald Trump’s fragile manhood at the Democratic National Convention last summer.
With one deft move, Obama combined a humorous observation about Trump’s preoccupation with the size of his rallies with hand gestures the raucous crowd interpreted as a reference to the former president’s brag about his penis size during the 2016 Republican primary.
In an exchange with then rival Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump denied that the size of his hands bespoke any sexual inadequacy on his part. “Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump said to a stunned, but thoroughly titillated nation watching the debate on television. “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 was a puerile insult that a bigger man — and certainly every woman — would’ve ignored as too stupid and self-demeaning to engage, but not Trump.
The GOP frontrunner was more than willing to become the first presidential candidate in history who was insecure enough to assure voters he possessed enough ‘big penis energy’ to lead America into whatever post-coital future it could imagine.
Of course trash-talk at such a lewd and epic level became the most memorable exchange of the Republican primaries. It solidified Trump’s reputation as an uninhibited vulgarian and crass disruptor of political and cultural taboos who was prepared to say and do anything to prove he was “a man’s man in a man’s world.”
Many months after clinching the GOP nomination, the Access Hollywood tape of Trump casually bragging about grabbing women by their genitalia without the formality of an invitation was leaked, nearly upending his presidential run in the home stretch.
It was the first time Trump’s Houdini-like ability to squirm out of trouble became obvious to everyone. His absurd contention that the decade old tape was “locker room banter” solidified his reputation as “a guy’s guy” without endangering the votes of his most moralistic supporters — white evangelicals.
During Trump’s presidency, news of his affair with Stormy Daniels, an adult film star he’d paid hush money to years earlier, surfaced. The most unseemly details — including breaking news about the shape and size of his manhood — turned Trump into fodder for late night comedians.
But Trump’s humiliation didn’t lead to a period of self-reflection and retrenchment to reality. The rhetoric of domination and the policies that reflected the brutal mannishness of the president himself became staples of his presidential and legislative agenda.
While his three Supreme Court appointees now contribute to a supermajority that routinely sets fire to civil liberties, minority and women’s rights, Trump is most himself while beating his chest regarding the presence of both undocumented and documented migrants in the country. He’s convinced millions of his MAGA cohorts to believe that there’s nothing manlier than oppressing those weaker than oneself.
Trump systematically trained them to believe a demonstrable lie — that he won the 2020 presidential election. Their fury at being cheated of a second Trump term was inconsolable. Trump’s cynicism and disregard for truth, even as his lies threatened the country he swore an oath to protect, was unprecedented.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump convinced thousands of his followers to oppose the peaceful transfer of power by throwing their own bodies in protest against the marbled pillars of the only democracy most of them had ever known. They did his bidding gladly. He was, once again, their alpha male hero in a country bereft of constitutional authority.
Trump made them love authoritarianism and even question whether their grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought on the right side during WWII. ‘What’s wrong with fascism if it has a familiar face?’ the most intellectually facile among them have begun asking thanks to Trump’s mutilation of history.
He’s persuaded them once again that he’s a “man’s man” — the apex predator who, if given a second term, would become dictator for a day; he could then rid the country of his favorite made-up bogeymen: the Biden crime family, Nancy Pelosi, the Obamas, the enemy within, radical left lunatics, the liberal media, transexual surgeries performed during recess, mandatory tampons in male prisons, legal immigration, dogs and cats living together and abortion up until the first day of elementary school.
In recent weeks, mockery about his fascination with Hannibal Lecter has forced Trump to wax nostalgic about more sympathetic cultural figures during the last stretch of the 2024 campaign, especially in Pennsylvania where the election is likely to be won or lost.
During a rally in Latrobe, Trump told a long and pointless story that meandered for 11 minutes about the region’s favorite son, the late golfing great Arnold Palmer. Sensing that he was losing the audience with his less than transfixing tale of Palmer’s greatness, Trump decided it was time to drag the golfer out of the grave by his genitals and make a MAGA prop of him.
“This is a guy who was all man,” Trump said with a giddy, voyeuristic laugh that was both complementary and somehow menacing. “When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there and they said, ‘oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’”
That was the signal to the men on the platform and the men behind him and the men throughout the rally site to laugh. It had taken 12 sullen minutes to get to that point. Trump was talking about ‘manhood’ again in the unmistakable language of penis size. It was not coded. It was man-on-man language. It was like that Village People song “YMCA” that Trump loves — an unapologetic anthem to masculinity with no gay subtext whatsoever.
As far as Trump is concerned, the content of one’s character boils down to one metric — whether one has a penis or not — the bigger, the better and none of this “all penises are equal” crap.
Trump was able to revel in his “manliness” in Latrobe again because no one at his rallies ever remembers what Stormy Daniels said about his manhood. Even if they did remember her vivid description and the late night laughter that accompanied it, they don’t believe it. “Little Marco’s” small hands jibe makes no sense to them either
Trump fans are not impressed by “fake manliness.” They laugh at Vice President Kamala Harris’ promise to shoot anyone who breaks into her home with a Glock she has owned for years. She’s just a hypocritical Democrat as far as they’re concerned. She may even be “overcompensating” for not being a dude who could handle a possible intruder with or without a gun.
The fact that she makes fun of the size of Trump’s rallies is not lost on them either. They see themselves as the vanguard of a growing movement, not a shrinking one.
During this phallocentric period of American history when truth is routinely turned on its head, nothing makes more sense than to be forever enthralled by the small penis energy of Donald J. Trump. What could possibly be more macho than being a sore loser bent on insurrection?