Speaking at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, earlier this month, to support the Republican senator Jon Husted, Donald Trump broke from his prepared remarks.

Trump said he had recently learned that Husted played football at university. The president, 80, said this had prompted him to conduct a physical assessment of Husted.

“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,” Trump said.

“You are a great athlete,” he said to Husted, 59. “Congratulations.”

It was just one example of Trump offering unsolicited, and increasingly unhinged, assessments of men’s bodies in the last two weeks, as he freewheels across the US attempting to drum up votes before November’s midterm elections.

With Republicans expected to struggle, it’s unclear whether Trump’s inspections are part of a carefully thought-out strategy or just a man indulging a pattern, but either way Husted, who has represented Ohio in the Senate since 2025, could be forgiven for wanting the president to stop paying him such close attention. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen, because Trump has begun to speak of Husted’s charms even when he’s campaigning for other candidates in other states.

So it was that an audience in Kentucky this week heard Trump talking about Husted, with his appraisal taking on a more forensic nature.

“I examined his ass,” the president said of Husted, who was not at the event. “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 continued: “I then patted him on the shoulder, and it was like a piece of steel. I’m still recovering.”

Democrats are expected to comfortably win the House next month and could even clinch the Senate, with the party even having a chance of winning deep red states like Mississippi, Kansas and Kentucky. That’s prompted a flurry of activity from Trump, who has repeatedly told voters to pretend he is on the ballot – the president seemingly ignoring his own historically low popularity.

Whether this tactic of trumpeting men’s looks can turn Republicans fortunes around remains to be seen – but in any case, Trump shows no sign of slowing. And while it’s Husted’s physique that has most captivated him, the president has shown himself to be an aesthetic pluralist, with other candidates catching his eye. Those include Ed Gallrein, a 68-year-old Navy Seal turned dairy farmer who definitely does not color his hair.

“He’s going to be, he’s going to be a perfect man,” Trump said of Gallrein. Trump recalled when he was looking for a candidate to run against the incumbent Republican congressman Thomas Massie – whom Trump does not like – in Kentucky.

“I needed somebody good, and this guy walks through the door,” Trump said of Gallrein. “I said, look at this beautiful guy.”

Trump’s unusual behavior hasn’t gone 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.

On Fox News, meanwhile, host Jesse Watters attempted to normalize Trump’s comments.

“Trump says a lot of stuff we all think but we don’t say. Sometimes it sounds a little gay. But he can get away with it because he’s straight,” Watters said.

“This is what guys say,” Watters continued. “He was saying this guy John Husted is a phenomenal athlete, he was an all-American corner back, national champion, division three football player and he’s got what it takes.”

Still, we’re approaching a point where Trump breaking off to tout the looks of his Republican candidates is as much a feature of his speeches as are his dark warnings that Democrats are aiming to turn the US into a cross between Pol Pot’s Cambodia and the Australia of Mad Max.

On Friday, at a rally in Dalton, Georgia, he discussed the contrasting charms of Jon Ossoff, the state’s 39-year-old Democratic senator, and Mike Collins, the stilted Republican challenger who wears his white hair in a style approaching a mullet.

Early in his speech, Trump broke off from a plea for people to “really get out there” and vote to compare Ossoff’s appearance to Pee-wee Herman, the comedy character whose popularity peaked in the mid-1980s.

“Somebody said he’s a good-looking man,” Trump said of Ossoff. “I don’t think he’s a good-looking man. I actually think Mike Collins is a good-looking man – and he’s all man. He’s all man. I’m not sure about Ossoff.”

Trump then turned his attention to Rick Jackson, the 72-year-old billionaire Republican who is running for Georgia governor.

“I actually think that Rick Jackson’s a very handsome, distinguished, beautiful-looking guy,” Trump said.

The examples keep coming. Tim Sheehy, a US senator from Montana was ruled “a very handsome guy”. An unidentified group of generals were dubbed “beautiful guys”. There was praise for Ted Nugent’s “beautiful-looking son”.

It’s a pattern which might have reached its zenith at a rally in Oklahoma this month. During his speech Trump broke off from his planned remarks to praise three “big, strong, good-lucking guys” he had seen waiting in the line outside the event.

“Where are they?” Trump asked the crowd. “You can’t miss ’em: big, strong, handsome Oklahoma studs.”

He proceeded to summon two men on to the stage.

“These are studs,” Trump said. “Wow.”

The crowd laughed nervously, unsure how to react to this intimate scene. But perhaps they shouldn’t have been surprised. Perhaps this was just the natural culmination of one man’s growing fascination with asses, jawlines and steel-like shoulders, a preoccupation that Trump seems to enjoy, but which seems unlikely to help Republicans on 3 November.