Tim Scott

Travis Gettys is a senior editor for Raw Story based in northern Kentucky. He previously worked as a web editor for WLWT-TV and a contributing writer for the Kentucky Enquirer, and he also wrote for the award-winning Sadly, No! blog. He has covered national, state and local politics, breaking news, criminal investigations and trials, sports and a variety of community issues, with a special emphasis on racial justice, right-wing extremism and gun safety.

President Donald Trump keeps praising Sen. Jon Husted’s backside at rallies, and according to a new report, he’s not about to stop.

In his “First Draft” newsletter, Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng spoke to three Republicans close to the president who said the 80-year-old president has been telling advisers and allies how much his crowds enjoy the material, and that he has tracked the laughs it draws.

“They love it!” Trump has said privately, according to one source.

The riff started in Ohio, where the Republican Husted is locked in a tight race with Democrat Sherrod Brown. “I looked at his a--, 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 in Youngstown earlier this month.

He brought a version of it to northern Kentucky: “I examined his a--. I never did that with a man before.”

On Tuesday he used it again in North Carolina, far from Husted’s race.

“I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it of course… But I looked at his a--, and then I looked at his legs, and I said, ‘His a-- is, it’s like a pile of muscle,’” Trump said.

He didn’t stop there. At Wednesday’s rally in South Carolina, he praised Sen. Darline Graham’s “very handsome” husband and said he’d “fall[en] in love with a man,” referring to Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).

Suebsaeng argued the president has little else to run on with his approval rating sinking, the economy struggling and the war with Iran dragging on, and he notes that Trump's 2024 closing message included a boast about golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitals – and he won.

Many Republicans aren’t laughing. The newsletter reports that GOP strategists are bracing for a midterm “bloodbath,” and one Trump adviser threw up their hands in exasperation.

“Talking about Jon Husted’s a-- this much is not going to make voters in competitive races forget about the price of gas,” the adviser said.

Suebsaeng wrote that if Republicans beat expectations on Nov. 3, he’d “have no choice but to admit that they staunched their losses with the help of President Trump’s ‘a--’ obsession.”

“For the sake of my own dignity, I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that,” he wrote.

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