Speculation is heating up regarding presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's choice of running mate, with names such as JD Vance, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott and Marco Rubio frequently mentioned as currently under consideration.

However, former Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci believes that a joke Rubio made years ago about his then-rival for the Republican nomination will likely result in his removal from the list of prospective picks, as Newsweek reports.

Weighing in on VP stakes

Scaramucci, who famously lasted less than a week as White House communications director in the Trump White House, recently spoke on his The Rest is Politics U.S. podcast regarding the state of the presidential race.

The discussion turned to speculation about Trump's potential choice of running mate, and that is when Scaramucci made a rather unusual observation about the former president's deliberations.

Opining that Trump will likely select “a white guy” in the vein of “Mike Pence 2.0,” Scaramucci explained why he thinks Rubio in particular, is not, in fact, under serious consideration for the role.

According to Scaramucci, Trump is almost certainly unable to look beyond a joke Rubio made during the 2016 presidential primary race about the size of his then-rival's hands.

Grudge alleged

During their campaign battle, Rubio lamented Trump's references to him as “little Marco,” and that is when he took aim at his competitor's hand size, as ABC News noted.

“He is taller than me, he's like 6'2”, which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5'2”, Rubio mused.

Rubio went on, “Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands,” adding a strategic pause for comedic emphasis before saying, “You can't trust them.”

In Scaramucci's estimation, Trump's touchiness on this issue lingers, noting that the presidential contender “has microscopic hands, it's weird when you look at his body and you look at these tiny little hands coming out of those cufflinked shirts, ok this is a little weird, the guy is sensitive about it.”

Suggesting that Trump will be unable to let bygones be bygones, Scaramucci continued, “Marco called it out on the campaign, there is no way he's picking Marco Rubio. No way! Because he doesn't want that replay on all the liberal media, he's not going to go with that.”

Playing it safe?

Having endorsed Joe Biden in the current cycle, Scaramucci maintains that Trump will ensure that his running mate is not someone who will pull attention away from himself and will therefore pick a bland, white male to take the number-two spot on his ticket.

“This guy's going with a white guy. Let me tell you something he's such a narcissist he can't pick Tim Scott and then have somebody say to him, 'well Tim Scott helped you with the Black vote so that's why you won the presidency.'”

He went on to argue that instead, Trump would want to claim full credit for an electoral win and will therefore select a “nondescript back-seater,” but given Scaramucci's questionable credibility and checkered past in the public eye, his assessment should probably be taken with a sizable grain of salt.