The latest superPAC attack ad against Donald Trump checks all of the boxes when it comes to campaign tropes. There's stock footage, an ominous soundtrack, "real" Americans.
"If the White House phone rings at 3 a.m.," the video solemnly implores viewers, in a reference to a Hillary Clinton ad from 2008, "could his little hands even pick up the receiver?"
The frame shifts to an actor wearing a hard hat who says, "It's time our country learned every inch of the truth."
The ad comes courtesy of the Americans Against Insecure Billionaires with Tiny Hands PAC (it's real, we checked). It asks viewers to sign a petition calling on Donald Trump "to release his official hand measurements."
There's been a wave of parody and humorous political action committees like the Tiny Hands PAC that have emerged in the years since TV comedian Stephen Colbert filed the paperwork for his now-infamous "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow" superPAC.
Trump's allegedly small hand size has been a meme since before there were memes. In 1986, satirical magazine Spy chronicled New York's obsession with business mogul Donald Trump. Spy crafted several nicknames for him throughout their writings, but it was "short-fingered vulgarian" that truly stuck.
Trump, of course, didn't take to the magazine's choice of words lightly, Graydon Carter, one of Spy magazine's founders told NPR's David Folkenflik:
"[Trump] blames me for this more than Kurt [Anderson, another Spy founder]. He'll send me pictures, tear sheets from magazines, and he did it as recently as [last] April. With a gold Sharpie, he'll circle his fingers and in his handwriting say, 'See, not so short.' And this April when he sent me one, I just — I should have held on to the thing, but I sent it right back by messenger with a note, a card stapled to the top, saying, 'Actually, quite short.' And I know it just gives him absolute fits. And now that it's become sort of part of the whole campaign rhetoric, I'm sure he wants to just kill me — with those little hands."
Former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio also tried to weaponize the tiny hands joke against Trump during a debate in March, although he later said he regretted it. Trump's response: "Look at those hands, are they small hands?" he said, raising them for viewers to see. "And, [Rubio] referred to my hands — 'If they're small, something else must be small.' I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee."
The political action committee was created in March. "We are patriotic Americans devoted to educating our fellow citizens about Donald Trump's tiny baby hands," wrote the group's treasurer, Henry Kraemer, in the filing with the Federal Election Commission.
"We're not done, if Donald Trump doesn't release his hand measurements, we're going to keep pressing," said Noah Heller, one of the group's founders.
Don't expect to see the ad in heavy rotation on cable: According to NBC/SMG Delta, the PAC spent just $1,104 to air the spot four times on MSNBC on June 14.
It costs nothing but postage to start a PAC with the FEC (although filling that account will be a bit more expensive). Simply fill out "FEC Form 1," following the instructions on the FEC's website, and await your reply.
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