Barack Obama’s Joke About Trump’s ‘Crowd Sizes’ Takes Internet by Storm

Former President Barack Obama’s hand gesture as he spoke about Donald Trump’s “obsession with crowd sizes” has sparked a large reaction from Democrats online.
During his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Obama took aim at the Republican presidential nominee.
“[Trump] has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances,” Obama said.
“It has been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames, and crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he said, drawing his hands close together to indicate something small. The DNC crowd laughed and then continued into a roar of approval.
The clip has been posted on X, formerly Twitter, by several high-profile Democrat-leaning accounts where it has been viewed millions of times. Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign for comment via email outside business hours.
Former CNN host Don Lemon speculated that Obama’s line had a double meaning, posting a freeze frame of the clip showing Obama’s hands close together, writing: “We all knew what that hand gesture meant @BarackObama. @realDonaldTrump is OBSESSED 🤏🏼with crowd sizes. #Obama #DNC2024 #tiny”
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels uses “Tiny” as a nickname for Trump. In a tell-all 2018 book, she alleged Trump’s penis looked like a “mushroom”. Earlier this year, the president was convicted of fraud relating to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to Daniels. She was reportedly paid to stop going public about her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump continues to deny any wrongdoing and denies the affair occurred, or that he ever knew Daniels.
Frequent Trump critic Ron Filipkowski and Justin Baragona, a columnist at Zeteo News, both shared the clip, drawing attention to the hand gesture. Filipkowski wrote: “The hand gesture on crowd sizes!” Baragona wrote, “Ummmm, check out what Obama does with his hands when he talks about Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes.”
Another frequent Trump critic Brian Krassenstein wrote: “Barack Obama just got under Trump’s skin BIGLY… ‘His WEIRD obsession with crowd sizes'”
Trump has made a series of posts on Truth Socal regarding crowd sizes, complaining that Kamala Harris and the “Fake News” exaggerate Harris’s crowds while underreporting the crowds at his own rallies.
“If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes ‘crazy,’ and talks about how ‘big’ it was – And she pays for her ‘Crowd,'” he wrote on August 8. “When I have a Rally, and 100,000 people show up, the Fake News doesn’t talk about it, THEY REFUSE TO MENTION CROWD SIZE. The Fake News is the Enemy of the People!”
In 2017, Trump’s then-adviser Kellyanne Conway famously used the term “alternative facts” to defend press secretary Sean Spencer’s false claim that Trump’s inauguration drew the biggest crowd of any inauguration in history.
In fact, more people attended Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.