YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO, A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE FROM JON HUSTED’S ASS (The Daily Whatever Press) — On Monday night at the Covelli Centre, the president of the United States informed a hockey arena full of Ohio Republicans that he had looked at their senator’s ass.
He didn’t mumble it. He didn’t bury it in a subordinate clause. He announced it like a man reading the specials. Here is the passage, straight from the Roll Call Factbase transcript, about Sen. Jon Husted, the guy Ohio’s governor appointed to fill JD Vance’s old seat in January 2025:
“But I’m standing over here. And 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. I looked at his ass 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.”
Whoa.
As of this writing, I have not been able to independently verify just how much junk is actually up in Jon Husted’s trunk, but, dear gentle reader, do rest assured I’m putting all my considerable resources into finding out for you.
As a gay man, I would like to formally welcome Donald Trump to a hobby I have practiced, with considerably more discretion, for most of my adult life. A few notes from a veteran. You don’t announce it. You don’t narrate it into a microphone. Especially not into a stadium crowd. And when you watch someone “up and down,” that’s called cruising, sir, and you are terrible at it.
But the line I can’t stop hearing is the disclaimer. “I don’t do this with men very often.”
Very often.
Not never. Not “I would never.” Very often. Every gay man in America heard that adverb and set down his drink. I came of age with no queer role models, which means I spent the entire 1980s in locker rooms studying the ceiling tiles like they were the Sistine Motherfuckin’ Chapel. The president of the United States is out here giving himself a hall pass on a Monday night in the Mahoning Valley. Don’t wait up, Melania! He ain’t comin’ home tonight, sweetheart.
The backstory, such as it is
This bit has a prequel. On October 3, at a rally in Vandalia, near Dayton, former NFL coach Jon Gruden told the crowd that he and Husted had been teammates at the University of Dayton, where Husted, a defensive back, intercepted 17 passes. Trump liked that. He called Husted “an All American.” He took a swipe at Sherrod Brown, Husted’s opponent, saying Brown “was not an athlete. That guy can’t tie his shoes.”
So in Youngstown, Trump circled back. “I explained that a week ago,” he said. “By the way, his poll numbers have gone through the roof since I did.” He said Husted had “become a different man now that we find out he was a great athlete.” Then came the full inspection.
Talk about a tight end! (He was a defensive back. I checked. Unlike the president, I checked with Google.)
Back to those poll numbers “through the roof.” The roof of what, exactly? A CNN/SSRS poll taken September 29 to October 5 has Brown at 49 percent and Husted at 43. Marist has Brown up eight. The same CNN poll puts Trump’s approval in Ohio at 36 percent. The only thing going through the roof in that arena was the president’s inner monologue, snuck out to play in front of dozens and dozens of people.
A brief history of trump and hands
Longtime viewers will remember that hands are a sensitive subject for this man. In 2016, Marco Rubio mocked the size of Trump’s hands with the old line about what they say about men with small hands, and Trump answered at a nationally televised Republican debate by assuring America, with his own two hands raised for inspection, “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”
Ten years later, the same man is leaning into a microphone to report that another man’s hands are “like claws.” Somebody’s been thinking about hands for a decade, and it isn’t Jon Husted.
And this isn’t a first offense. In May, at a rally in Suffern, New York, Trump admired New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart out loud: “I’m looking at the legs. He’s this beautiful guy. He’s got legs like tree trunks!”
Oh, honey. You’re down bad, and I get it.
You remember the volleyball scene in Top Gun. Kenny Loggins wailing “Playing with the Boys,” a beach full of oiled-up naval aviators, two and a half minutes of slow-motion pecs that the director, Tony Scott, cheerfully called soft porn. Every Gen X gay kid in America saw that scene and quietly learned something about himself. Donald Trump is doing the volleyball scene live, at eighty, in a hockey arena, with a fifty-nine-year-old senator in a suit.
Donny, whatever you do, don’t watch Heated Rivalry or it will literally melt your brain.
Next, he’s going to start singing Monty Python’s “Sit On My Face, And Tell Me That You Love Me,” and really, truly mean it (just like I do when I sing it to my boyfriend).
The party of penguin panic
Here is where I stop laughing for a second. This is the same political movement that spent the last several years pulling And Tango Makes Three, a picture book about two male penguins raising a chick, off library shelves because it might give somebody’s third grader ideas. Republicans have called drag queens predators, turned teachers into suspects, and treated a rainbow sticker in a classroom window like a summons.
If a Democratic president had stood at a rally and said “I looked at his ass” about a male senator, Fox News would have run the chyron until Thanksgiving and made it reach through the screen and slap you, like Poltergeist. Instead, the crowd in Youngstown laughed, and Husted stood up when Trump called on him, and applauded. His office didn’t respond when the Daily Beast asked for comment. It was, you might say, a full-body endorsement.
I don’t care who Donald Trump looks at. Look at whoever you want, sir, as long as they are a consenting adult. I care that his party has made other people’s bodies its whole personality, and he just stood under the jumbotron and showed everybody where his eyes go.
And the ass talk was the warm, fuzzy part of the night. Later in the same speech, Trump called Somalis “low-IQ people,” and in the stands a protester in a “Release the Epstein Files” shirt got punched and dragged by her hair by an apparent supporter.
So, Ohio. Jon Husted got the most intimate endorsement in the history of the Buckeye State, and he’s still losing to Sherrod Brown.
Donald Trump checked out Jon Husted. On November 3, Ohio can check him out of the Senate.
And Senator? If retirement doesn’t work out, I’d like to suggest a new career — on OnlyFans.
Thanks for stopping by!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
We’re live every Friday at 10am ET with thoughtful analysis, sharp interviews, cultural commentary, humor, and the kind of conversations that don’t pretend everything is fine when it clearly isn’t.
If you’re enjoying what we’re building, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Your support helps us keep the show independent, book fascinating guests, and continue creating smart conversations with your morning coffee.
We love you — mean it!
Remember what he said about Arnold Palmer at a rally?
Freud has fodder