Why Trump can’t stop talking about hunky men’s bodies

The US midterms are in full swing, with President Donald Trump making various rally stops to boost his Republican candidates. While the cost of living, the Iran conflict and national debt are likely top of voters’ minds, the President appears to be preoccupied on other matters: specifically, Ohio senator Jon Husted’s ass. “I’m studying his body… I looked at his ass. I said, ‘His ass, it’s like a pile of muscle,’” Trump, 80, marvelled over Husted during an October 20 rally in North Carolina. “Then I looked at his legs and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’” Although Trump doth protest that he’d “never studied the body of a man before” — it’s not his “thing” — as with many things that come out of the President’s mouth, the facts say otherwise. Shorts In fact, Trump gushed over Husted’s college football-sculpted physique a week earlier at an October 12 rally in Ohio, and again during an October 17 rally in Kentucky. “He came up, and he was talking very nicely, and I stood right over here, and I examined his ass,” Trump said. “I never did that with a man before.” And he didn’t stop there. “I examined his ass, and then I looked at his shoulders, I looked at his feet, I looked at his hand, I looked at his jawline, studying… I then patted him on the shoulder, and it was like a piece of steel. I’m still recovering.” The world seems to have a lot to say about Trump’s fixation with Husted’s body. A Rolling Stone headline declared his recent pitstops, “The Last Tour for Our Horny, Mad King.” Meanwhile CNN’s Anderson Cooper, dubbing the President “assman-in-chief”, pointed out that Trump’s thirsting wasn’t limited to just Husted. He well and truly dispelled the notion that noticing men’s physical attributes wasn’t Trump’s “thing” by pointing out that it actually was, with a montage of the President commenting on a whole host of other men’s bodies. They included House of Representatives candidate Ed Gallrein (whom he described as coming straight from “central casting”) and NFL players Harrison Butker (“a good-looking sucker”) and Jaxson Dart (“a beautiful guy” with “legs like tree trunks”). The contrast with the behaviour of his Vice President, JD Vance, and the open hostility to the LGBT community from his Maga base is extraordinary. This month when a man yelled “I love you” at Vance during he rally, he quickly replied: “I love you too, sir. In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the Vice President, not James Talarico [the straight Democrat Senate candidate for Texas]”, in a comment many condemned as homophobic. Of course, Trump has for years expressed delight at the physical appearance of some men. He has surrounded himself with those who – like masculinity-obsessed Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth – he deems to be straight from “central casting”, always the phrase he reserves for particularly chiselled jawlines and pronounced muscles. But the past few weeks have seen a marked escalation in his ruminations on the male body. At a rally in Michigan, Trump spent some time commenting on rapper Nicki Minaj’s buttocks (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) Trump’s apparent obsession with looks may stem from his pre-political career in the vanity-obsessed world of reality television as host of The Apprentice, or perhaps from his former stewardship of the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants. And it isn’t just reserved for men. On Sunday, Trump spent some time at a Michigan rally commenting on the buttocks of rapper Nicki Minaj – although Husted’s own behind got an honourable mention too. Still, in the case of Husted, it’s more than a little bizarre for a sitting president to apply casting call standards to the world of politics. In the infamous words of Kourtney Kardashian, “Kim, there’s people that are dying”. (Indeed, there are people actually dying under the Trump administration, not least the 52 people in ICE custody since Trump’s second presidential term began, per Human Rights Watch figures.) The President’s fascination with men’s bodies over the years has been itself a source of fascination among political watchers. In 2025, Trump’s estranged niece, Mary L Trump, told the Financial Times that he was frequently beguiled by his brother — and Mary’s father — Fred Trump Jr’s good looks. He once described Fred, who died in 1981 aged 42, as “handsome as could be”. Mary said: “He used to say that about my dad all the time. Back then, it was sort of like, ‘Freddy was kind of a loser, but at least he was handsome.’” Mary, a psychologist and author, opined that Trump’s outsized compliments towards other men could be an attempt to ingratiate himself to others. According to his niece, “it’s very, very, very important to him that the other person like him”. Republican congressional candidate for Kentucky Ed Gallrein is ‘straight from central casting’, according to Trump (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) Could a bro-to-bro compliment on one’s ass, for example, be Trump’s attempt to disarm and seduce both voters and his political peers? “It’s [partly] Trump playing the role of a Borscht Belt comedian, working the room,” Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, tells The i Paper. “He knows being outrageous gets a response at rallies, so he says things that will get a rise out of his audience, like praising a man’s ass or talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis.” At a 2024 campaign rally, Trump gushed over the size of the champion golfer’s penis, drawing criticism from Palmer’s daughter over disrespecting her late father’s memory. Cassino added: “The message there is mostly, ‘Can you believe I’m saying this stuff?’ using outré statements as a signal of sincerity.” More than just pandering for votes and approval, Cassino says, “Trump — like many Americans — associates masculine traits with leadership traits”, and his comments reinforce that ideology. “As such, every candidate, male and female, has to perform masculinity in some way to prove to voters that they’re capable of being a leader,” Cassino explains. “This is why you get so many ads of candidates with guns, or touting military service or, in this cycle, bench pressing heavy weights.” Trump once described Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker as a ‘good-looking sucker’ (Photo: AP) “So when Trump praises a man’s body, saying that he’s big or muscular or has big hands or feet as an oblique way of saying he has a large penis, he’s saying that this candidate is masculine, so he can be presumed to have the masculine leadership traits voters want.” But there is another important aspect to this news cycle we must consider. For all the derision Trump has faced because of his compliments, alongside the homoerotic subtext that the public has gleefully read into, should society take a look in the mirror itself? The more interesting question is why expressions of admiration between men sometimes generate discomfort or speculation in the first place, says psychologist Dr John Moore, the founder of men’s mental health publication Guy Counseling. “That tells us something about the expectations we continue to place on men and how they express themselves,” he adds. “Historically, many men have been socialised to be cautious about expressing admiration for another man’s physical appearance,” Moore continues. “Traditional expectations surrounding masculinity often emphasise emotional restraint, and some men may worry that complimenting another man could be misinterpreted as expressing sexual attraction.” He adds that recognising that another man is physically attractive doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sexual orientation. “Men can appreciate another man’s appearance in much the same way they might admire his confidence, athletic ability, or personal style.” Perhaps we ought to interrogate why we are so easily bemused when Trump comments on other men’s bodies when we’re rightfully aghast when he comments on women’s appearances.