Donald Trump defended himself Thursday against attacks on the size of his hands.

As the Republican presidential debate got underway in Detroit, Trump took the opportunity to rebut something that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio had teased him about earlier in the week.

He held up his hands to the audience. "Look at those hands. Are they small hands?

"He referred to my hands, 'if they're small, something else must be small.' I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee."

In spite of the total absurdity of the interaction, the strangest thing about Trump's defense of his hands was his feigned surprise.

"He hit my hands," Trump said. "Nobody has ever hit my hands, I've never heard of this. What?"

In reality, the joke about Trump's hands started more than 25 years ago, when Graydon Carter began referring to Trump in the pages of the satirical Spy magazine as a "short-fingered vulgarian.'

In November, Carter wrote in Vanity Fair that, "to this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him -- generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers."

On Tuesday, Trump defended his hands at a rally in Ohio. "He said I have small hands," Trump said, referring to Rubio. "But I've always heard people say, 'Donald, you have the most beautiful hands.'"

The disconnect between Trump's version of events and everyone else's was classic Trump.

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar , rampant xenophobe , racist , misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.