U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he makes an impression of a transgender weightlifter during his address to House Republicans, in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 6, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump continues to describe GOP lawmakers' physical characteristics when he's on the stump. When there's nothing to compliment, Trump returns to an old favorite: Sen. Jon Husted's (R-Ohio) behind, which Trump noticed recently was spectacular.
While many have commented on the humbling experience of Husted being catcalled before thousands of people, longtime columnist Amanda Marcotte is tying Trump's bizarre rants to something larger.
Writing for Salon in her Friday column, Marcotte explained, "Trump is famously a lifelong heterosexual, so many in the media and on the left are confused. They assume that latent homoerotic yearnings are burbling up, perhaps from the disinhibition that can occur among people who take regular tests for dementia..."
Marcotte noted that Trump's audience "screams" with laughter at the president's comments about a U.S. senator. It's the same laughter when Trump goes off on a racist tirade, she said.
"It’s a large-scale version of the infamous 'Access Hollywood' tape, where Trump tried to impress the show’s host, Billy Bush, with braggadocious claims that he can grab women’s genitals and they have to put up with it," she explained.
She cited a New York Times report saying that Trump loves making a spectacle out of the way men look, particularly if it gets his MAGA crowd to cheer. Meanwhile, Republicans "have no choice but to grin and pretend they enjoy it." For Trump, it's an expression of dominance over GOP leaders with "fancy job titles" demanding they flatter him on camera or wear the "ill-fitting shoes he has 'gifted' them."
According to Marcotte, Husted, like all Republicans, has little to nothing that he can run on. For Trump's part, he likely didn't even know anything about Husted before he landed. All Trump knew, Marcotte said, is that he played football. So he turned to what he did know. Husted needed name recognition and a goose in the polls. Marcotte joked he was "goosed" in a different way.
She thinks that if Trump had just talked about him as a former football player with broad shoulders and chiseled muscles, no one would care. Trump took it further by commenting on Husted's behind, and that became the headline.
Meanwhile, in Texas, Trump is saying the exact opposite about Ken Paxton, who doesn't dress well, as Trump has observed.
It isn't merely the applause Trump is lusting for. Marcotte mentioned the disinhibition that comes with dementia. Studies have found that those with frontotemporal dementia experience a behavioral variant. They simply can't control themselves.
Lev Parnas, a former friend of the Republican leader, said back in April when speaking to Wajahat Ali, “He's not healthy."
Dr. John Paul Garrison, a clinical and forensic psychologist as well as an expert in body language, has spent years documenting Trump's decline, particularly when it comes to behaving appropriately.
"When he's talking to people, he looks away. He struggles to maintain appropriate levels of eye contact. Obviously, people look away sometimes, but what I'm talking about are changes in his behavior because this is not what he used to do. We see issues in social cognition, gaze control [and] attention deficits after people have had strokes, when they have dementia, when they have frontal lobe dysfunction, when they have various neurocognitive issues. So, to see him struggling so much with eye contact now to me suggests this is more evidence of that continued decline," Garrison explained in September.
“I don't know how anyone can see what he posts or watch him in any meeting and think that he's fit for office,” said one lawmaker speaking to reporters in May. They were not the only ones noticing Trump's knack for saying the most bizarre things at the most inopportune times. In fact, several lawmakers have commented on it.
“We have strategic ambiguity. But [Trump] is just … He’s confrontational, inconsistent, erratic,” said another congressman, who then fluttered his tongue in a demonstration of Trump’s lucidity.
“I don't trust that man to be able to cognitively make a complete sentence, let alone negotiate with China,” said another.
“I think he's seriously ill,” said still another. “I think Trump needs medical attention and there needs to be an intervention.”
Marcotte closed by saying that the one thing it shows is that "he owns these people. He can define them in reductive, humiliating language, and they have been so hollowed out as human beings that they won't even defend themselves."
