BUNS OF STEEL

Trump Goes Deep With Wild Thirst Over Male MAGA Senator

The president has now told at least three rally crowds about the time he checked out Jon Husted’s butt.

Donald Trump has developed a very specific fixation on one of his favorite Senate candidates.

The 80-year-old president was in Greenville, North Carolina, on Tuesday night to rally for Senate candidate Michael Whatley. Midway through his speech, he drifted into a now-familiar ode to the physique of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, one he has delivered at three rallies this month, and to which he keeps adding more detail.

Husted, 59, a former Ohio lieutenant governor, was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 to fill JD Vance’s seat. He now faces Democrat Sherrod Brown in a tough fight to keep it.

In Greenville, Trump recalled inviting Husted onstage at an earlier event. “So he walks up, and I always thought he was very quiet,” Trump said. “He’s a lieutenant governor, was a really good lieutenant governor, but I thought he was very quiet. Maybe too quiet for politics.”

“So he’s over here, I’m over here, and I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before; it’s not my thing,” he continued.

“Nothing wrong with it, of course. Nothing. … But it’s never been my thing, to be honest with you. But I looked at his a--, and then I looked at his legs… It’s like a pile of muscle.”

“Then I looked at his legs and I said, man, his feet are big. Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder and it actually hurt my hand. It was like a piece of steel,” Trump said. “I said, this guy’s a monster.”

Trump’s fixation started on Oct. 3, at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, near Dayton. There, former NFL coach Jon Gruden, Husted’s college teammate at the University of Dayton, endorsed him and told the crowd about Husted’s football career. Trump said he was looking at Husted differently, but he didn’t go into detail yet.

“I hear a great football player, John,” Trump said that night. “He had 17 interceptions… Nobody told me you were a great athlete. Now I look at him… I didn’t know he was a great champion athlete. Wow… A defensive back. Wow.”

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Nine days later, on Oct. 12 in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump told the crowd what that looking involved. He described scanning Husted “up and down,” starting with his rear and ending with his hands.

“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete, and I looked and I watched up and down,” he said. “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.”

Just five days later, Trump brought it back up.

On Oct. 17 in Highland Heights, Kentucky, the body inspection expanded. Trump added Husted’s shoulders, feet, and jawline to the list, insisting once again that he’d never done this with a man before.

According to Trump, Husted’s shoulder felt “like a piece of steel.”

“I stood right over here, and I examined his a--. I never did that with— No, I never did that with a man before,” Trump said. “I examined his a-- and then I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jawline. Study him. He’s got a jawline.”

“I then patted him on the shoulder, and it was like a piece of steel,” he added.

By Tuesday in Greenville, the list had grown again, to include Husted’s legs and “big” feet. The shoulder pat now “actually hurt my hand,” and Trump added his own disclaimer: “Nothing wrong with it, of course.”

Trump has also credited the riff with turning the race around, and that claim has grown along with the anatomy lesson.

In Youngstown, Trump said Husted’s “poll numbers have gone through the roof since I did. Ohio tends to like football.”

By Kentucky, he had put a number on it. “I explained it to the crowd. I said, ‘This is unbelievable.’ And you know, he’s picked up like 9 or 10 points since I talked about that,” Trump said, adding that Husted now had “a really good chance of beating a very bad candidate, a failed senator, I guess. [Sherrod] Brown, right?”

On Tuesday, he went further with his imaginary polling. “By the time I finished with that story, he went from being 10 points down to being 2 points,” Trump said. “Today a poll came out. He’s 2 points up.”

He also claimed the story had transformed Husted himself, saying, “Today he was screaming, ‘We will win.’ Where the hell did this guy come from? It’s like he plays football.”

Public polls paint a murkier picture. A Rasmussen Reports poll taken Oct. 12–14 showed Husted ahead, 49 percent to 47 percent. But most surveys this month have had Brown in front: 49–46 in a New York Times/Siena poll, 49–43 in a CNN poll and 48–44 in a Marist poll. Among the polls tracked by RealClearPolitics this month, Brown’s biggest lead was 6 points.

The White House and Husted’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Husted isn’t the only man to get the the thirst treatment from Trump this month. At an Oct. 1 rally in Oklahoma, Trump invited supporters onstage whom he called “big, strong, handsome Oklahoma studs,” then assured the crowd: “I’m not at all physically attracted to them.”

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