In what is either inalterable proof of the fact that President Donald Trump is just as petty and insecure as we have always imagined or proof that any image is prone to a dresslike binary controversy, people on Twitter are debating whether or not Trump is Photoshopping images to make his hands look bigger. It began when author Dana Schwartz took a close look at an image of Trump bidding adieu to Barack Obama in front of a helicopter.
While these images weren’t an exact pair, the image on the left does seem to have a slightly larger hand. Further investigation revealed a much closer—but still not exact—match.
The evidence here is a lot more compelling, though the image remains slightly different, as shown by the saluting marine standing behind Trump. Still… that hand does seem noticeably larger in proportion to Obama’s shoulder, and inflated, as if gripping an object larger than the one it is. Additional details emerge upon careful perusal. Other Twitter users note that Trump appears a bit slimmer in the supposedly edited image and that his chin seems less voluminous. One envisions amateur sleuths flipping back and forth between images, driven mad by the subtle differentiation and poring over the details for some sort of clue—anything to prove evidence of the conspiracy. This is both very far down the rabbit hole and extremely convincing:
@DanaSchwartzzz tried to scale the photos based on their shoes (and was generous). Trump’s hand is still enormous compared to the original. pic.twitter.com/9XraoWKO8l
— Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee) January 27, 2017
You can flip back and forth between an exact copy of the images here. In a sense, the Trump hand/Photoshop conspiracy is the dress (or crying Bill Murray, or paint on the legs, or blurry meat) for our new dystopian world, in which the president’s insecurity about his penis size is the source of global debate and ridicule. On the other hand, it might be proof that the president is really insecure about the size of his hands! Gives you something else to troll the president with, after taking care of more important business.
UPDATE: This GIF, made using Getty’s image and the one hanging on the White House wall, is pretty damning. Handgate begins.
UPDATE: Handgate ends. As The Verge and the Washington Post report, the photo ABC broadcast wasn’t the one hung on the White House wall but an inserted still of the Getty image. Further, that still doesn’t have the same warp effect as the one Schwartz initially tweeted. Schwartz has also deleted some of her tweets.