The hot-button joke Barack Obama made about Republican nominee Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday was improvised on the spot, his speechwriter said.
The former president clasped his hands together during his speech to indicate he was referring to a smaller number, and criticized Trump’s “bizarre obsession with crowd size.”
The visual gag drew laughter from the audience, with some online speculating that Obama was making a joke about Trump’s body shape in a mocking move.
“What I want people to know is that it was a spur of the moment thing,” Jon Favreau, President Obama’s White House speechwriter, said on the latest episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast, which aired Wednesday.
Favreau said the “penis joke” was written by Obama’s former communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, but added that the suggestive hand gesture was entirely Obama’s.
“He just put his hand on the podium,” Favreau said on the podcast.
The joke was well received at the Democratic National Convention but infuriated Trump, who took it as a personal attack.
“He was attacking the president. And so was Michelle Obama. And they’re always saying, ‘Mr. President, please stick to the policy. No personal attacks,’ and yet they’ve been making personal attacks all night,” Trump said of Obama’s speech at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.
Asked about Obama’s comments, a Trump campaign spokesperson told Business Insider that Democrats are making “baseless personal attacks” because they “don’t have real solutions to the problems Americans face every day.”
“That’s why Kamala and the Democrats will lose the election in November — they are more interested in personal grievances than helping people,” the spokesperson added.
To be sure, Trump is no stranger to ridiculing his political opponents with nicknames and personal attacks.
The Republican candidate has mocked President Joe Biden’s age by calling him “Sleepy Joe” and has also tried out several nicknames for the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“People say, ‘Stop it,’ but you know all my names. They’re all working. They’re all very successful,” Trump told rally-goers on Wednesday.
