Did Donald Trump comment on his hand size during the 2016 presidential campaign?

1. The opening salvo: Rubio’s joke that made it a campaign story

Marco Rubio’s line — “And you know what they say about men with small hands… you can’t trust them!” — at a campaign event revived a decades‑old jibe about Trump and turned a private insult into public fodder; outlets such as the BBC and ABC documented Rubio using the gag on the trail and the immediate media attention that followed ^{[1] [6]}. Reporting notes the joke reached back to a 1980s Spy magazine quip and thus resurfaced a long‑standing sensitivity in Trump’s public persona ^[6].

2. Trump’s onstage rebuttal: showing hands and the double entendre

In direct response, Trump used stagecraft to rebut the insinuation: he physically displayed his hands on camera at a March 3 debate and in rallies, and he said lines including “Look at those hands. Are those small hands? … I guarantee you there’s no problem,” invoking a sexual double entendre to counter Rubio’s mockery ^{[2] [3] [7]}. NBC, Politico and other contemporaneous outlets recorded the exchanges and quoted Trump’s exact phrasing as part of the campaign coverage ^{[8] [3]}.

3. Media measurements and the Madame Tussaud’s angle

After the on‑stage back‑and‑forth, reporters and commentators pointed to a physical measurement: The Hollywood Reporter and subsequent outlets reported a Madame Tussaud’s handprint listed at about 7.25 inches, which many news organizations compared to average male hand length and used to prolong the story in summer 2016 ^{[4] [5]}. Commentators analyzed that figure against anthropometric data and framed it as feeding the “tiny hands” narrative ^[9].

4. How outlets framed the dispute — humor, gendered taunts, and spectacle

Coverage treated the episode as both political theatre and a culture story about masculinity. Opinion and feature pieces used the hand saga to lampoon Trump’s persona (for example The Guardian and Vice’s later pieces), while analysis pieces connected the insult to broader themes of masculine imagery and spectacle on the campaign trail ^{[10] [11] [12]}. Academic commentary published later also reflected on how the “tiny hand” trope functioned rhetorically during the 2016 cycle ^[13].

5. What the primary sources do — and do not — claim

Primary news reports here document that Trump was mocked by Rubio and that Trump publicly defended himself by showing his hands and saying “I guarantee you there’s no problem” ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The sources also report the existence of a 7.25‑inch handprint at Madame Tussaud’s and subsequent media discussion about whether that was small relative to averages ^{[4] [5]}. Available sources do not mention any definitive medical measurement directly performed on Trump by journalists during the campaign aside from the museum imprint measurement cited above ^{[4] [5]}.

6. Competing perspectives and the implicit agendas in coverage

News coverage mixed straightforward reporting of what was said onstage (NBC, Politico) with opinion and satire (The Guardian, Vice, The Hill) — the former documenting facts and quotes, the latter using the moment for ridicule or critique ^{[8] [3] [10] [11]}. Some outlets emphasized the petty, entertainment dimension of the exchange; others linked it to gendered attacks and campaign strategy, exposing an agenda to either trivialize or to analyze the political meaning of such personal barbs ^{[12] [13]}.

7. Bottom line for the original question

Yes — Donald Trump did comment on his hand size repeatedly during the 2016 campaign: he publicly showed his hands at debates and rallies and used the line “I guarantee you there’s no problem” to answer Marco Rubio’s taunt; later reporting about a 7.25‑inch Madame Tussaud’s handprint kept the story in public view ^{[2] [3] [4]}. If you want the direct quotes and moment-by-moment transcript, the contemporaneous news reports cited above (Politico, NBC, Business Insider) reproduce those remarks and scenes ^{[8] [3] [2]}.