U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he participates in a signing ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026.
President Donald Trump praised the physical appearance of Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), raising attention about his previously well-established recent habit of making overtly aesthetic comments about the men in his vicinity.
"President Donald Trump has bizarrely thirsted over the body of a male MAGA senator during a midterm rally," reported The Daily Beast's Cameron Adams on Monday. "Trump, 80, attended a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday evening to lend his support for Senator Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy."
Adams added, "During his speech, the president praised Husted and admitted he didn’t know about his past playing football for the University of Dayton, where he earned All-American recognition as a defensive back and kick returner." Adams quoted Trump as saying of Husted, "He was a great athlete. I don’t do this with men very often, I started examining his body, because I didn’t know he was a great athlete."
Trump continued, "And I looked, and I watched up and down, and I looked at his a-- ... and I looked at the whole... and then I looked at his hands, look at his hands, he’s got these, like, claws... and I got it, you are a great athlete.”
While unorthodox, Trump often compliments the physical appearance of men around him. In 2026 alone he did so when meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and New York Giants Quarterback Jaxson Dart. He also repeatedly referred to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the Senate as the Republican nominee in that state, as "ugly." Yet the president is just as prone to mentioning how women appear as he is how men appear — and, just as he can kind to Husted or cruel to Paxton, he is known for being either overtly flattering (such as how he judged and spoke to contestants on the reality TV show that launched him to superstardom and a presidential campaign, "The Apprentice") or bitterly cutting toward women over how they look.
""December 6th he called Kaitlin Collins 'stupid and nasty,'"" MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace pointed out in December. "On November 27th he said 'are you stupid' To CBS journalist Nancy Cordes. On November 26th, he called the New York Times' Katie Rogers 'ugly.' On November 18th, he called ABC's Mary Bruce 'terrible and insubordinate' — to whom I'm not sure — November 14th, he told a Bloomberg reporter, 'quiet, piggy,'"
Because Trump seems to obsess more over people's physical appearance at present, to the point where doing so interferes with what would otherwise seem to be the responsibilities of his job, experts have expressed concern that they could be a sign of cognitive decline. Speaking to AlterNet in May, former Tufts University psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham — who authored a letter to Congress by 36 health professionals saying Trump is unfit to serve — argued that, broadly, Trump's erratic and obsessive comments are a "red flag."
“It’s a red flag,” Abraham told AlterNet at the time. “People perseverate because they can’t think of anything else to say, because they’re cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear. In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they’ve clustered.”