Jaw-Dropping Time Trump Talks About Appearances Exposed
The president is more obsessed than ever.
Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS
If you thought Donald Trump’s thirsting at Republican backsides was excessive even for him, you’d be right. It turns out the 80-year-old president has never talked this much about how people look.
New analysis from the Washington Sun found Trump is on pace for his biggest-ever month of remarks about other people’s bodies and body parts.
Roll Call’s Factbase compiled the analysis after sifting through more than 4,600 transcripts of Trump rallies and events, culminating in his 2026 midterm campaign.
It found that in the last 12 months, Trump prattled on about people’s appearance nearly three times as often as he did on the 2016 campaign trail, with October set to top the charts.
Trump speaks at a rally for Ohio Sen. Jon Husted whose a-- he's praised repeatedly.
Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS
Blaming the sheer volume of his campaign-trail rambling won’t work either. The Sun accounted for the extra hours at the mic, and the finding stuck.
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Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s rear end has been the consistent headliner.
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On stop after stop, Trump has told crowds he “examined his a--” before declaring it “a pile of muscle.” He has also joked that shaking hands with the senator hurt because his shoulders were so solid.
The routine gets such a big reaction that the octogenarian president now performs it far from Ohio. At a rally in Greenville, South Carolina, last week, the “pile of muscle” line may have been the loudest moment of a 90-minute speech that was supposed to rescue vulnerable Republicans in a brutal year for the party.
Husted, 59, has played along. Before Trump’s return to Ohio on Wednesday, the former college football player said he’d been working out so he wouldn’t “let him down.”
On Wednesday night, Trump took the act to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he told about 2,500 supporters he had been “examining that man for his physical prowess” and bragged that his comments had lifted the senator in the polls. “I saved his a--,” Trump said, as NBC4 Columbus reported.

President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at a midterm campaign rally at Shoemaker Center in Chillicothe, Ohio on October 28, 2026.
KENT NISHIMURA/AFP via Getty Images
He isn’t the only one getting graded. Trump has said rapper Nicki Minaj has a “beautiful a--,” and he likes to tell audiences that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 72, has the “body of a 30-year-old.” He once called border czar Tom Homan “central casting.”
Rapper Nicki Minaj has also had her butt praised by the president.
Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
What has changed is the tone. Trump’s previous peak, around the 2024 campaign, ran on insults like his “pencil-neck” jabs at California Sen. Adam Schiff and his cracks about former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s weight. This year’s surge is mostly flattery, with allies routinely labeled “handsome” or “good-looking.” The Sun also found he remarks on men’s looks far more often than women’s.
Trump's biggest man-crush appears to be on Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio.
Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS
“It’s no secret that President Trump has always had an appreciation for the big and beautiful, Chris Christie excepted,” a MAGA strategist told the Sun.
The strategist argued the bit plays well online too. “Only Trump could compliment a man’s a-- at a rally and somehow come out of it looking like the most confident guy in the room,” they said.
Not everyone in his orbit remembers it this way. A longtime friend told the paper they didn’t “recall him being fixated on the subject” before.

Figures show that Trump is obsessing about other people's bodies far more than ever before.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
David Hamermesh, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a book on the economics of beauty, saw a small upside in the shift. “He’s not insulting people for a change,” he told the Sun.
He still drew a line. “The president shouldn’t be doing this,” Hamermesh said. “It has nothing to do with the job.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House campaign for comment.
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