Will Trump’s Extra 11 Inches Help Him Beat Harris in Debate?

One swears he is 6 foot 3. The other vehemently denies she is 5 foot 2.

But Tuesday night in Philadelphia, Americans will witness the greatest height differential between presidential candidates in history in the flesh—and be left to wonder, what difference does it really make?

On the Republican side, former Pres. Donald Trump’s height has been an unusually present part of his biography—mostly because Trump’s actual height is open to argument.

In April 2023, when he was booked in New York for falsifying business records, he was listed at 6 foot 2. A few months later, when he was indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, official documents stated he was 6 foot 3. Wikipedia has him at 6 foot.

Kamala Harris Says Donald Trump Is ‘Gonna Lie’ at Presidential Debate

And an internet sleuth studying pixels in a photograph of Trump and his 6-foot-7 son Barron concluded that Trump is “exactly” 5 foot 11 inches.

Whatever the reality, Trump insisted in a Truth Social post on Saturday, “No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris.”

“We had this out previously with former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he was in a debate, and he was not allowed a ‘lift.’ It would be a form of cheating,” Trump wrote.

(In 2020, Trump claimed “Mini Mike” Bloomberg was 5 foot 4. Bloomberg is actually 5 foot 7, the AP reported, although the former New York City mayor once listed himself on his driver’s license at 5 foot 10. Incidentally, Trump’s Little Marco insult to Marco Rubio was apparently not about height.)

Trump has played the height card against previous adversaries. In one of his 2016 debates against Hilary Clinton, Trump famously lurked and loomed in the background while Clinton spoke.

At the time, Clinton’s height was the subject of its own minor mystery. In her first run for president in 2008, her campaign reported that she was 5 foot 5. By 2016, she had grown two inches and was listed at 5 foot 7, according to Jay Mathews, 5 foot 2, of The Washington Post, who has written extensively on candidate tallness or what he calls the “most important but least-covered issue in U.S. politics.”

Harris, meanwhile, has battled online claims that she’s actually 5 foot 2.

In a January 2024 interview interview, Katie Couric casually asked Harris: “Why did I think you were much taller? I recently learned you’re only 5 foot 2. Is that true?”

“That is absolutely incorrect,” Harris fired back. “I am 5 foot 4 and a quarter—sometimes 5 foot 4 and a half, and with heels, which I always wear, I’m 5 foot 7 and a half, thank you very much.”

Couric replied: “OK, Wikipedia, you’re wrong, and we need to correct that."

“Totally wrong,” Harris said. “I don’t know where it came from. I was 5 foot 2 when I was 12.”

“They say I’m 5 foot 1 on my Wikipedia page,” Couric said, explaining she’s actually 5 foot 3 and three-quarters.

“It’s like literally they just want to just make us smaller in every way than we are,” Harris said.

“I know,” Couric laughed, joking that she was relieved to learn that Harris was “short” too.

“No, I’m not!” Harris insisted. “I literally am not. They’re just trying to take 2 and a half inches off my, you know, being.”

Both may be telling the truth. Or maybe they’re exaggerating. But when they stand on the same stage in their first debate on Tuesday night, they both know that every inch counts: In presidential politics, height—at least until now—has always mattered.

The taller candidate has won two-thirds of U.S. presidential races since 1900. Out of the 31 contests between 1900 and 2020, the taller candidate prevailed 21 times. Over that period, winners were an average of 1.2 inches taller than losers.

Harris and Trump have both been preparing for the most important 90 minutes of the campaign. Harris is rehearsing with TV-style lighting against an aide dressed in an oversized suit and tie like Trump and—according to one report—wearing an orange wig and elevator shoes. Both candidates have practiced handling tough policy questions and dishing out and blunting attacks.

But for all the prep, the do-or-die debate—and the election itself—may come down to a simple, inescapable physical comparison (underscored by the report of Harris’s mock debate opponent wearing three-inch platform shoes.)

“Height has had a huge effect on our politics,” according to Mathews.

“If...voters have a chance to see candidates standing side by side, they tend to vote for the taller one,” Mathews wrote.

Of course, in every presidential general election—except one in 2016—the physical stature of one man was compared with another man’s.

The perceptions of male versus female presidential candidates are obviously different. But the basic psychology of size is primal, experts say. Voters connect height with strength, communication skills and leadership— consciously or not.

“We conclude that height is an important characteristic in choosing and evaluating political leaders,” according to a comprehensive study in The Leadership Quarterly.

While the height gap is the widest in history, neither candidates’ height is for the record books.

If elected at her official 5 foot 4 and a half, Harris would not be the shortest president in American history. That distinction belongs to James Madison who was 5 foot 4 and barely weighed 100 pounds. And Trump, if he is 6 foot 3, is still an inch short of Abraham Lincoln’s 6 foot 4.

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