President Donald Trump has a new pitch for Republican candidates: They’re easy on the eyes.
“Look at this handsome guy,” Trump said at a rally Saturday in Kentucky, referring to U.S. House candidate Ed Gallrein, an angular-faced former U.S. Navy SEAL who stood near the stage. “Central casting.”
It’s a common refrain from Trump, who owned the Miss Universe beauty pageant and grew his influence on the reality TV show “The Apprentice” before entering politics. Aesthetics has long been part of the president’s measuring stick, either as a source of praise or a target of ridicule.
Now, Trump is rolling out his beauty assessments as he promotes Republican candidates in a midterm election that already includes debates on the most masculine candidates. The outcome will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress or whether Trump faces emboldened Democratic opposition in Washington.
Shortly after Trump touted Gallrein’s good looks on Saturday, he mentioned Sen. Jon Husted, the Ohio Republican running for re-election, and described him as “a perfect person, a beautiful man.”
“I looked at his butt,” Trump said, drawing laughter. “I’ve never done this with a man before. I looked at his butt. And then I looked at his shoulders. I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand. I looked at his jaw.”
It was a reprise of Trump’s amusing assessment at a previous rally in Ohio, when he also touted Husted’s past as a college football player.
Not all Republicans are so lucky Ken Paxton learned.
“I don’t really like the way he looks,” Trump said of the Texas Republican Senate candidate at the party’s midterm convention as Paxton stood nearby, smiling.
Trump previously said “it’s so insulting to him, but I might as well say it.” He added that Paxton’s conservative record as attorney general “speaks much more eloquently than the suit he’s wearing that doesn’t look so good.”
Democrats are far from immune to the president’s visual judgments. Trump says Paxton’s opponent, Democratic candidate James Talarico, reminds him of Alfred E. Neuman, the freckled, gap-toothed MAD magazine mascot.
And he had a disparaging assessment of Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democratic heartthrob with a jawline rivaling Husted’s. Trump compared him to Pee-wee Herman, the sallow-faced, widow’s-crested comedy character, as he rallied Friday against Ossoff’s opponent, Rep. Mike Collins, in Georgia.
“Someone said, ‘He’s a handsome man,’ I don’t think he’s a handsome man,” Trump said. “I actually think Mike Collins is a handsome man, and he’s all masculine.”
He later became the Republican nominee for governor of Georgia.
“And I actually think Rick Jackson is a very handsome, distinguished, good-looking guy,” Trump said.
“But anyway.”
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