The absurd reason Marco Rubio is wearing too-big shoes.

Will Marco Rubio’s humiliations never end? Recent photos show the secretary of state, whom Donald Trump dubbed “Little Marco” at a campaign rally almost exactly one decade ago, clomping around in shoes that are far too large for his feet. They’re black and freshly shined, an otherwise appropriate choice for a political leader a few heartbeats away from the presidency, but with a gap around his heels that could fit a sizable tube of lip gloss in a pinch.

The shoes cut an absurd figure, like a little boy pretending to be a businessman in Daddy’s oxfords. And they’ve got to be hideously uncomfortable. If you’ve ever walked a mile in the stiff leather dress shoes of someone bigger-footed than you, you know the blisters, toe stubs, and awkward gaits that can come as a result.

But a little fashion faux pas and a touch of foot pain are a small price to pay for pleasing the temperamental king of the GOP. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Rubio’s shoes came as a gift from the president, who has taken to bestowing his favorite brand of shoes on Republican lawmakers, right-wing A-listers, and the men who work in his administration. A pair of affordable Florsheims has become Trump’s go-to token of appreciation for his bro gang—or, depending on how you look at it, a mandatory uniform signaling the loyalty of his acolytes.

Having to wear the same stupid shoes to every White House meeting because your self-obsessed boss wanted you guys to be matchy-matchy is embarrassing enough. But the particular circumstances of Rubio’s shoes are downright pathetic. As Vice President J.D. Vance recalled at an event in December, the Journal reported, he was meeting with Trump, Rubio, and an unnamed third politician in the Oval Office when the president accused Vance and Rubio of having “shitty shoes.” Trump asked them all for their shoe size; Vance made sure to put in the record that he’s a size 13, while Rubio claimed to be an 11 and the third man a 7. The president then launched a sideways insult at the guy with the daintiest feet: “You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”

That the “locker-room talk” president would place an inordinate, genital-related premium on a man’s foot size was surely no surprise to Rubio, who has risen in GOP influence in direct proportion to his willingness to contort himself to Trump’s exact desires. It does not seem out of the realm of possibility, then, that Rubio would inflate his own shoe specs to impress Trump with his masculine bulk.

You can imagine the gears in Rubio’s brain whirring as he sat across the Resolute Desk from Trump. If he shared his actual shoe size, the president might scoff at his presumably small penis. If he lied and offered a larger number, he’d end up shuffling around D.C. in Daddy’s big-boy shoes for the rest of time. The correct answer was clear: Rubio’s pee-pee reputation had to remain intact, whatever the cost to his feet.

Over the past year—the past decade, actually—there has been a lot of talk among the anti-Trump public about how we’re all living in “the dumbest timeline.” What this means is that horrifying things keep happening in the most farcical possible way. The U.S. recently killed several dozen elementary school children in Iran, according to a preliminary military investigation; the strike was helmed by a shellacked Fox News host who sometimes texts the wrong people his war plans. The president is demolishing the White House seemingly to distract from the email archives of a pedophile sex-trafficker for whom he wrote a birthday poem framed by a primitive drawing of a woman’s body. The secretary of state who presided over the demolition of USAID—ending the dollar-for-dollar best deal in the betterment of human life and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children across the world—is walking around in clown shoes because he doesn’t want his boss to think he has a small dick.

Perversely, Rubio’s gaping shoes might do more to please the president than any pair of ample-sized feet ever could. Humiliation is exactly how Trump prefers to test the fealty of those in his employ. If you want to be in the president’s orbit, you’d better pretend it’s the pinnacle of artistic excellence when Lara Trump belts out a nasal Tom Petty cover at the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party. You’ve got to smile and choke down your Big Mac on Air Force One, even if you’ve made your name as the clean-eating guy. As the vice president, you’re supposed to graciously nod as Trump calls you incompetent, accuses you of being a buttinsky, and says you’ll never be his successor. Every time Trump makes these people lie to themselves or endure a public shaming, he weakens their sense of self and their public image, reducing their worth to their proximity to him.

Rubio has earned plenty of mortification badges from this administration. Just last weekend, he spoke Spanish to a convening of Latin American heads of state, which earned him mockery from Trump (“I think he’s better in Spanish”) and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (“I only speak American”) in front of the very same audience. Willingly ridiculed for his Cuban heritage, for admitting to a degree of intelligence and worldliness, for showing a measure of professional competence, Rubio behaved exactly as Trump wanted: like a worthless, groveling worm, desperate for either approval or punishment, as long as he gets to stick around.

It seems like just yesterday that Rubio was leaning offscreen in a sweaty panic to chug from a miniature water bottle in his 2013 State of the Union response, or getting taunted by Trump for wearing heeled boots to boost his 5-foot-10 stature during his run in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. This guy is a certified glutton for degradation. In the Trump 2.0 administration, that makes him the perfect chump to fill the secretary of state’s shoes.