WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance got his kicks retelling a bawdy foot joke by President Trump at a party last week.
The veep recalled at a gig he hosted Friday that earlier that day, the president abruptly sidetracked an “important” Oval Office meeting to quiz his team about their shoe sizes, with Vance crowing how he ended up besting Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Today I’m in the Oval Office with the president,” Vance recalled to party-goers. “And we’re talking about something really, really important. And the president kind of holds up his hand and says, ‘No, no, hold on a second, there’s something much more important.’
“He peers over the resolute desk, and he says, ‘Marco, JD, you guys have sh–y shoes,” Vance said. “We got to get you better shoes.’ So he goes out and grabs a catalog.”
Trump, Vance and Rubio — the veep’s potential rival to fill Trump’s figurative shoes in 2028 — were joined by another politician who the vice president declined to name to avoid embarrassing him.
After Trump returned with the catalog, he began to question all of them about their shoe sizes.
“The president is giving us four pairs of shoes,” Vance recalled. “And he’s actually asking our sizes in the middle of this conversation.”
Vance noted that his shoe size is 13, and Rubio’s was 11.5, while the “other politician” in the room drew Trump’s amusement by admitting to being 7.
“The president kind of leans back in his chair and says ‘You know, you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size,’ ” Vance recounted to laughs from his audience.
Nine years ago, Trump had an infamous exchange with then-foe Rubio during a 2016 GOP presidential primary debate after his future secretary of state jabbed at his “small hands” and “spray tan.”
A visibly riled-up Trump underscored on the debate stage at the time that his hands weren’t small and that another anatomy part was decently sized as well.
“I have to say this, he hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands,” Trump quipped during the debate. “I’ve never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands if they’re small, something else must be small.
“I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you,” the future president said.
Vance noted during his Christmas Party remarks that a lot of his interactions with Trump are “exactly as you would expect it to look like if you watched on TV or just paid attention to the media.
“But sometimes you get these behind-the-scenes moments that I will never, ever forget for the rest of my life,” he said.
