The Continuing Saga of Trump's Obsession With Men's Looks

Convicted felon Donald's Trump near-homorotic obsession with men's looks is well known.  This pattern of obsession with the personal appearance of men extends back decades-- but has become more pronounced in the past ten years. During his first term, Trump often waxed poetic about the pilots posted to Air Force One, likening them to taller versions of Tom Cruise. “These guys are specimens,” he said during a late October interview with Joe Rogan. “Like perfect specimens.”

In the last three months alone, Trump has praised the looks of a sheriff in Tempe, Ariz.; a Mexican government negotiator; Shinzo Abe, a former leader of Japan; Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri; and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, who he noted had lost weight. (“You look so handsome,” he said about Pompeo.) He also famously alluded to the size of genitalia of the deceased golfer Arnold Palmer, whose looks Trump has also apparently approved of.  “They look like Arnold Palmer,” Trump said about a group of gun-toting security officials at an event in October. “Can’t look better than Arnold.”

So it should come as no surprise that Trump's obsession with men's looks took front and center at his "midterm convention" this week when a photo of left-wing streamer Hasan Piker posing in his underwear was flashed on the big screen, prompting a flabbergasted reaction from Piker as he watched the moment unfold online.  The picture (pulled from Piker's instagram) was included in a narrated video shown on the stadium’s jumbotron.  The video was intended to stir GOP outrage on the so-called dangers of left-wing policies.  But the gratuitous thirst trap attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. Piker, who was live streaming at the time, pulled up the video in full, letting out a stunned “Ohhh!” into his microphone as the shot of him in his underwear appeared on screen.  “Nooo!” he continued. “They fucking posted the meat pic! Nooo! Yo! They posted the meat pic at the fucking Trumpapalooza!”  “They blurred my penis,” he concluded through laughter.

Not coincidentally, it should be noted that Grindr, the world's largest LGBTQ+ dating app, went down as the Republican National Convention's midterm event began on Wednesday. According to Downdetector, the app reported several outages just as the conservative event kicked off at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. The highest number of reported outages appeared to occur in and around the Dallas area.  A similar incident was reported during the 2024 RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "If that's the case, it aligns with Grindr activity during previous national conventions," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.