'So Gay:' Trump's Repeated Husted Body Talk Has People Asking Why He Keeps Going Back to the Senator's 'Ass'

Donald Trump has returned for a third time this month to the physique of Ohio Senator Jon Husted, telling a North Carolina rally that he had been 'studying his body'.

Speaking in Greenville on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, the president described Husted's backside as 'a pile of muscle' and said tapping his shoulder 'actually hurt my hand'. It was the latest in a string of remarks about the senator's body this month, which have drawn online mockery.

Fox News host Jesse Watters previously joked that the comments sometimes sound 'a little gay'.

'I'm Studying His Body'

Trump was at Pitt-Greenville Airport campaigning for Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair and the party's Senate nominee in North Carolina, who is trailing Democratic nominee Roy Cooper in the polls, when he brought up Husted. He recalled inviting the Ohio senator on stage at an earlier event.

'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,' Trump said. 'It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. I always precede it by saying, "Nothing wrong," but it's never been my thing, to be honest with you.'

He went on to describe what he saw. 'But I looked at his ass. I said, "His ass, shit, it's like a pile of muscle,"' Trump said, in a clip shared by the journalist Aaron Rupar and reposted by one X user.

'Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand,' he continued. 'He's like a piece of steel. I said, "This guy's a monster."' He added: 'Then I looked at his legs, and I said, "Man, his feet are big."'

Trump then claimed the inspection had paid off politically. 'By the time I finished, they did a poll,' he said. 'He's leading by two.' Trump did not identify the poll, and the claim could not be independently verified from his remarks.

Separately, the Cook Political Report rates the Ohio Senate race between Husted and former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown a toss-up.

Youngstown, Kentucky and Now Greenville

Roll Call's Factba.se transcripts of his October rallies show Greenville was the third time this month that Trump has described examining Husted's body. At an earlier rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on 3 October, Trump praised Husted as a 'great football player' and an 'All-American', according to the Vandalia transcript.

The remarks began in Youngstown, Ohio, on 12 October, when Trump discussed Husted's college football career. 'I started examining his body, because I didn't know he was a great athlete,' he said, according to the Youngstown transcript. 'And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass... And then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He's got these, like, claws.'

Five days later, at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, Kentucky, he returned to the theme. 'I stood right over here and I examined his ass,' Trump said, according to the Kentucky transcript. 'I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jawline.' He added that patting Husted on the shoulder 'was like a piece of steel'.

TMZ, which covered the Kentucky remarks, noted that Trump had brought the subject up 'once again'. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had criticised the Youngstown comments in an interview with TMZ.

Husted, a Republican, was an All-American defensive back at the University of Dayton, according to Newsweek. He was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 to fill the seat vacated by JD Vance and now faces Brown in a special election on 3 November.

'A Little Gay'

The latest clip drew a fresh wave of mockery online. 'This is a crazier, gayer, more deranged version of what he spewed out the other day,' wrote the X account @AntiToxicPeople, in a post that had been viewed more than 500,000 times when checked on Wednesday, 21 October. The same user went on to question Trump's mental state, writing that they could not 'grasp how absolutely bizarre and cringeworthy this is'.

Another user replied: 'If any Democrat said that, Fox would be having seizures for weeks.'

An ally on Fox News has also remarked on how the comments come across. After the Youngstown rally, Jesse Watters told viewers of The Five: 'Trump says a lot of stuff we all think, but we don't say. And sometimes it sounds a little gay. But he can get away with it because he's straight.'

Watters added that voters should 'go with the guy with the better ass', before turning on his co-host Greg Gutfeld. 'Greg has no ass. Flat,' he said.

The Greenville rally was also interrupted by protesters, several of whom were removed. Trump recalled advice he had given in the past to 'beat the hell out of them', The Daily Beast reported, but as another protester was taken away during the rally, he said: 'Don't hurt him!'

Ohio voters will decide on 3 November whether Husted keeps the seat, whatever the president thinks of his physique.