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This is part of Hello, Trumpworld, Slate’s reluctant guide to the people who will be calling the shots now—at least for as long as they last in Washington.

Around this time nine years ago, during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, candidates Marco Rubio and Donald Trump were engaged in a dispute about penis size.

Rubio, then still a freshman senator from Florida, had “dealt” with Trump the way most other primary candidates had that cycle: by ignoring him and hoping that his candidacy would collapse under its own ludicrousness. By late February, though, Trump was beginning to run away with the thing, and Rubio was the Republican establishment’s last best hope. The usual tricks weren’t working. I covered a South Carolina rally in which Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott—two other figures Trump would go on to smother eight years later—endorsed Rubio, presenting themselves as the future of the party. Trump easily won the South Carolina primary.

So, in his desperation, Rubio began to let it rip.

“You know what they say about guys with small hands,” Rubio said at a Virginia rally on the last day of February. He paused for effect. “You can’t trust ’em!”

Big mistake. As soon as Rubio began to engage Trump on Trump’s terms, “Little Marco” became fresh meat. Trump, in what remains one of his funnier clips, elaborately mocked Rubio’s infamous State of the Union water bottle lunge. And during a debate in early March, Trump responded to the penis joke.

“He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I have never heard of this. Look at those hands. Are they small hands?” Trump said. “And he........

© Slate