U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during his address to House Republicans at their annual issues conference retreat at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., U.S., January 6, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Spy magazine has returned for at least October, reprinting some of its early Substack issues that feature now-President Donald Trump. That latest example talks about the "body double" that Trump wanted the magazine to use.
The satirical monthly magazine shuttered in 1998
One conversation creators Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson recalled was Trump's tiny hands.
"Graydon said, ‘This guy, Donald Trump,’ — whom we’d barely heard of — ‘for a tall guy, he has the shortest fingers I’ve ever seen,’” Anderson recalled when speaking to the New York Times earlier this month about the reprinting.
That factoid could explain the post on Thursday from Spy featuring the April 1988 cover about “heck of a guy” Donald Trump. It was Trump's first appearance on the cover of Spy the Substack explained. Trump was on the "Nice" issue of the satirical magazine.
"His body double was a Spy co-founder, which explains the normal-length fingers," the Substack recalled.
"The same issue’s Party Poop feature captured Trump at a society dinner where he seemed to be practicing the alert pose that he has more recently made famous at the World Cup, Lindsey Graham’s funeral and innumerable cabinet meetings," the Substack continued, recalling the photos.
A slumped Trump, then 41, was in a tuxedo with pants hiked up over his stomach. He held a cloth napkin in his left hand like a hot dog and appeared to reach for something in his right pocket.
The caption reads, "Donald Trump demonstrates the fine posture and sparkling joie de vivre of the high-class, swanky real estate mogul he is."
The magazine became known for skewering the New York elites and was the one behind the mockery of Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian."
Carter is the reporter who, for years, received photos of Trump with his hands circled with a gold Sharpie. Trump evidently felt that his hands looked normally sized in the photos. It has become a running joke about Trump through the years, long before bruises began appearing on top of his hands and he started using makeup to cover it up.
In 2016, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) mocked Trump's "small hands" during a GOP debate. It triggered Trump to such a degree he began talking about the size of his manhood from the debate stage. From then on, Trump called him "Little Marco" and repeatedly showed off his hand size.
Using a handprint in concrete of Trump, The Hollywood Reporter made a template that allows folks print a life-size outline of Trump's hands to compare with their own.