The president noted to Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” how handsome the officers were who rushed into the Washington Hilton ballroom to protect him and others after shots were fired nearby.
“I also saw a lot of very strong, physically strong, really attractive law enforcement people come through those doors, and frankly it made me feel very safe, very, very safe — there was nobody gonna get by them,” Trump said.
While there appeared to be genuine gratitude in the president’s praise, his zeroing in on the security detail’s physical attractiveness in a fast-moving moment of stress seemed peculiar. Or perhaps right on brand.
The president’s own vanity and insults toward women for their appearance are well-known ― but he has also “normalized talking about and critiquing men’s looks, ushering in a new era of fawning assessments and regular commentary about the appearance of his cabinet members and others,” The New York Times wrote in a recent article
That includes law enforcement. In March, Trump fawned over how jacked the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers deployed to airports were.
“They just happen to have much larger, and harder, muscles than most — which is what they’re supposed to have,” he said.
