Longtime GQ editor Graydon Carter revealed his bitter, decades-long feud with Donald Trump was ignited over an argument about his hand size.
The editor recalled in an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that he ‘did not want to do’ his first ever cover story with Trump in 1984, which gushed over the then-real estate developer’s rapid rise.
The cover had Trump pose with his hand on his chin next to the headline, ‘Success – How Sweet It Is’, with an inside picture showing the billionaire with wife Ivana Trump in his Trump Tower penthouse office.
An article titled ‘Donald Trump Gets What He Wants’ accompanied the flattering pictures, noting how he ‘can afford to sit pretty’ with ‘powerful friends, a beautiful wife, a football team, and some of the choicest turf in Manhattan.’
But Carter told Scarborough that Trump hated the depiction of himself, and was particularly upset about a remark on how his hands looked ‘small.’
Carter recalled that Trump was so intent on squashing the cover that he ‘had his staff buy up every copy he could find on newsstands around New York’ so the public wouldn’t see it.
The story follows an apparent insecurity of Trump’s that re-appeared in his runs for the White House, giving political ammunition to his political opponents.
Trump even remarked on his hand size in a GOP debate in the 2016 election, after his current Secretary of State Marco Rubio questioned: ‘If they are small, something else must be small.’
Carter recalled that although he was not enthused about giving Trump his ‘first national exposure’ at the time, he did so because he ‘needed the money.’
‘So, I hung around with him for three weeks, I wrote the story, and there were a few things he didn’t like about it,’ he said.
In his description of Trump introducing him to America in 1984, Carter noted his ‘six-foot-two-inch frame is trim but well-nourished’, and wrote that the real estate mogul’s hands were ‘small and neatly groomed.’
‘He didn’t like that at all,’ Carter recalled. ‘He liked the cover, but he didn’t like anything else.’
Carter added that Trump then bought out every copy within sight to hide it from the public, but admitted the tactic didn’t work as the cover turned Trump into an overnight celebrity.
The GQ editor told the story as he was asked by Scarborough about being ‘blamed for the rise of Donald Trump’ after launching the future president’s career in the 1980s.
He said the irony of Trump hating his CQ cover so much that he bought every copy in sight may have turned the future president into a ‘star.’
He said Condé Nast owner Si Newhouse – who also ran GQ – was so impressed by the cover’s sales that he raced forward with publishing Trump’s book The Art of the Deal.
The Art of the Deal made Trump a household name as he became affiliated with huge real estate purchases and a lavish lifestyle, eventually catapulting Trump into a media personality and eventually president.
‘A butterfly’s wings,’ Carter added.
The editor has been making the media rounds to promote his upcoming memoir, When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, where he dished on his role in turning Trump into the commander-in-chief.
Despite his long history with Trump – even reportedly attending his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples – Carter has been far from shy about criticizing Trump.
This included a scathing article he penned about the president in his first term in 2019, where he described Trump as ‘mad’ and speculated he was mentally ill.
Citing ‘the obvious decline in the president’s mental abilities,’ Carter argued that Trump is no longer merely the ‘tacky, self-regarding’ developer of 1980s Manhattan, in his outlet Air Mail.
‘Back then, if you overlooked the crassness and the pushy ambition, he even had a certain charm,’ Carter recalled of Trump.
‘Given the powers granted him by dint of his current position, he is most certainly a real and present danger to the entire world.’