The set of “Morning Joe” offered a new theory for why President Trump had a tendency to inflate the size of his cheering crowds, with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski suggesting on air that the president might be “compensating” for something else.
“He always lies about crowd size,” said Brzezinski. “There’s a compensation issue. It’s like a really sleek sports car. That’s what a big crowd is to him.”
“He’s trying to compensate,” Scarborough concurred talking under his breath as Mika spoke. “Huge compensation.”
Mercifully, both hosts declined to dive any further into that line of speculation.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump openly rebutted attacks against his manhood, memorably telling Sen. Marco Rubio during a debate that there was “no problem” there.
“[Rubio] referred to my hands if they’re small, something else must be small,” said Trump. “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.”
The “Morning Joe” hosts issued the compensation barb in response to President Trump’s rally in Montana on Thursday night, during which he did his best to puff up the crowd size, telling those gathered that it was comparable to an Elton John concert.
“I’ve broken more Elton John [attendance] records, and I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar, or an organ,” he said Thursday evening in the Treasure state. “This is my only musical instrument – the mouth – and hopefully the brain is attached to the mouth. The brain is so much more important.”
In the past, Trump has ordered his surrogates to inflate numbers as well, most memorably Sean Spicer, who spent his first day as press secretary falsely insisting that the president’s inauguration had produced the largest crowds in history.