US President Donald Trump mocks 'Mini Mike' Bloomberg for his height, or lack thereof

Trump, who stands at about six feet, three inches depending on which source you use, has hammered away, of late, at Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor whose campaign for the Democratic nomination is gathering pace.

Bloomberg officially is five feet and eight inches, but in recent tweets and interviews, Trump has lopped four inches off and alleged that Bloomberg asked to stand on a box during Democratic primary debates.

POTUS christened Bloomberg as ‘Mini Mike’ and he said that the Democratic nominee hopeful had the worst debate performance in history.

He later retweeted Dan Scavino, his assistant and director of White House’s social media, who had tweeted a Fox News video clip of an interview with Bloomberg in which the anchor asserts that Bloomberg said that he was a friend of Donald Trump and New York icon. Adding to the retweet, Trump said that, Bloomberg on the video clip was the “REAL Mini Mike”. POTUS added that the presidential nominee hopeful admitted many times that he is “a fan of Donald Trump”.

All this height-shaming is not new for the Republican leader. He also has slapped 'little' or 'liddle' (or even liddle', apostrophe included) on a number of lawmakers of varying heights -- Adam Schiff, Marco Rubio, Bob Corker, to name a few.

Indeed, Trump seems keenly aware that in America, height matters.

This is not the first time Trump has mocked Bloomberg for his height who stands at a full five feet and seven inches. On Feb 2, he claimed that Bloomberg is negotiating to get on the Democratic primary debate stage and “to have the right to stand on boxes, or a lift” at the debates. He added that it is done sometimes but is not fair.

Look back at Trump's recent predecessors and they were all at least six feet tall, or close to it -- Barack Obama, George W Bush, his father, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, to name a few.

Indeed, Americans are so caught up with the height of their leaders that during one of the 2016 Republican presidential debates, Google has said the most frequent online search was not about a policy issue. It was about how tall Jeb Bush was (answer: 6'3").

On the same day, he claimed that “Mini Mike” Bloomberg is part of “the fake news” in a tweet and said that it would be too boring to cover himself and that’s why the fake news is covering “Only Trump”.

(With inputs from AFP)