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Donald Trump made a bizarre comment about a US senator’s backside during a campaign event in Ohio.
The president told rally-goers in Youngstown on Monday that he had inspected Senator Jon Husted’s physique after discovering the Republican was a former American football player in college.
Trump said he had been surprised to learn about Husted’s sporting achievements at the University of Dayton, but decided to investigate for himself.
‘I don’t do this with men very often,’ he told the crowd. ‘I started examining his body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down.’
After saying that he ‘looked at his ass’, his remarks prompted laughter from the audience.
He then continued by saying: ‘Look at his hands. He’s got these, like, claws. And I got it … you are a great athlete.
‘I didn’t know that because he doesn’t talk about that.’
Trump also suggested Husted’s polling numbers had improved after voters learned about his sporting career. The senator was an All-American defensive back for the University of Dayton Flyers, who won the Division III national championship in 1989.
Later, after inviting Husted on stage, Trump joked that he had hurt his own hand when hitting the senator on the back.
‘I just hit him in the back and I hurt my hand a little bit,’ he said. ‘He’s like a piece of steel.’
Trump also stated at one point that if the Democrats are elected in the next presidential election, he will be ‘the last Republican president’ in the history of the country.
Husted is fighting a tight Senate race against former Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, whom Trump called the candidate of ‘Marxist, the communists and the anti-American radicals who want to tear down America’s heritage’.
He also claimed Ohio would be ‘destroyed like Minnesota’ if Democrats were in charge, urging voters to back Husted and Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
‘If you want to stop Ohio from being plundered, ransacked and destroyed like Minnesota is being destroyed… vote for Jon Husted and vote for Vivek Ramaswamy,’ Trump said.
‘Democrats want to burn it all down,’ he added, warning voters not to let Brown ‘slither his way back into power’.
The rally also featured former NFL coach Jon Gruden and boxer-turned-influencer Jake Paul, who travelled to Ohio with Trump aboard Air Force One.
Gruden, a Sandusky native and former college teammate of Husted’s, introduced the president to the crowd.
Paul, who grew up in Cleveland, urged Ohio voters to back the Republicans, claiming Democrats were running ‘evil’ candidates who were ‘willing to do anything to destroy us’.
‘We have to protect this state,’ he said.