It was either a last-ditch considered strategy to win votes, or the ramblings of an increasingly unhinged and increasingly amorous party leader.
Either way, it didn’t work.
Despite Donald Trump spending the last few weeks touting the good looks of Republican midterm candidates, praising asses, shoulders and jawlines, almost all of his roster of “handsome” and “beautiful” men lost their elections on Tuesday, while the Trump-approved hot guys who did win mostly limped over the line.
Take Jon Husted, the Ohio senator.
“I examined his ass,” the president, 80, said of Husted in late October. “And then I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jawline. Studied him. He’s got a jawline.”
Trump’s lasciviousness continued: “I then patted him on the shoulder, and it was like a piece of steel. I’m still recovering.”
This unusual sales pitch – “vote for this hot guy” – failed to break through with Ohio residents. Husted lost by five points, in a state which Trump won by 11 points in 2024.
It didn’t work in Georgia either, where Trump spent time campaigning for, and seemingly lusting after, the Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins.
“Mike Collins is a good-looking man – and he’s all man,” Trump told a crowd in the state before the election. He lost to the Democratic senator Jon Ossoff – (Trump: “I don’t think he’s a good-looking man”) – by 18 points.
Trump’s idiosyncratic closing message didn’t go unnoticed. Anderson Cooper, the CNN host, dubbed Trump the “assman-in-chief” as he played clips of his comments on air.
“There’s nothing at all unusual – and certainly nothing gay – about a president who dances daily to YMCA and who publicly pined for a reprise of Betty Buckley in Cats,” Cooper, who is gay, said.
Unfortunately, the candidates Trump had admired continued to record poor results.
“I actually think that Rick Jackson’s a very handsome, distinguished, beautiful-looking guy,” Trump declared in the run-up to the election. Jackson, 72, had been favored to win but lost to Keisha Lance Bottoms in the Georgia governor’s election by about 8.5 points. Bottoms became Georgia’s first Democratic governor since 2003, and the country’s first Black female governor.
Some fared better. Ed Gallrein, a 68-year-old farmer, was described by Trump as a “perfect man”. Trump picked Gallrein earlier this year to run against the Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whom Trump does not like.
“I needed somebody good, and this guy walks through the door,” Trump said of Gallrein. “I said, look at this beautiful guy.”
Gallrein won his congressional district in Kentucky, 54% to 40%, but this was a much smaller margin than the 64% of the vote Trump himself collected in 2024. Likewise, the Republican Bill Hagerty, whom Trump has described as “a very handsome guy”, retained his Senate seat in Tennessee, but only by about half the margin with which he won in 2020.
What about the others?
Trump branded a group of men “Oklahoma studs” during one campaign rally last month, but they weren’t running for office. It’s unknown how the unnamed men have fared since winning Trump’s praise.
Others might want to be careful of Trump taking a shine to them. Asked by the New York Post days before the election to name the “best-looking member” of his administration, Trump singled out Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, as “a good-looking guy”.
If reports are to be believed, Hegseth and his good looks might be sacrificed in the coming weeks, potentially blamed for the Trump-led Iran war, which contributed to the historic Republican losses.
