President Donald Trump’s campaign push for Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) took another turn toward the senator’s backside on Thursday, and plenty of people online couldn’t believe what they were watching.
In a 31-second TikTok that looks like it was filmed in the Oval Office, Trump praised Husted as “one of the best football players around” and “a great senator who nobody knew this” about, before turning to the senator’s physique.
“He has a great a--. Very powerful a--,” Trump said, according to a clip shared by the account FactPost, which called the post a "strange TikTok" from the Republican president.
It isn’t the first time. At a Michigan rally Sunday, Trump spent roughly three and a half minutes on Husted’s football career, The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire reported, and his comments about the senator’s body have become a running theme of his closing midterm pitch.
Clint Russell, host of the libertarian podcast “Liberty Lockdown,” summed up the reaction in five words: “I think I’m having a stroke.”
Journalist Jesse Singal admitted, “Wait I assumed this was fake but it’s real.”
New York magazine political columnist David Freedlander offered a sarcastic theory.
“My secret hope is that it will turn out that there was extensive polling and focus grouping that shows that in fact this is exactly the kind of thing the American people have been calling for,” Freedlander wrote, “and Trump has been just relentlessly on message in the campaign’s closing days.”
“Donald Trump is on TikTok talking about another man’s a--. That’s it. That’s the presidency tonight,” wrote Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko.
Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, joked that the “hot take” economy must be in a deep recession, “because we haven’t had any great posts explaining Trump’s a---fixation.”
Even some right-leaning voices piled on. Owen Shroyer, a former Infowars host, wrote, “It’s a powerful midterm message. Goodnight and good luck!”
Libertarian commentator Hannah Cox quipped, “I really thought our first gay president would be so much more fun and whimsy.”
Husted, a former Ohio lieutenant governor, was appointed to the Senate in January 2025 to fill the seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance and is on the ballot Tuesday in a special election.