PResident Trump is happy in playing what he calls the “gay national anthem” whenever he wants to rouse the crowd. He has a crush on Elton John, was friends with Liza Minnelli, and has a Liberace-esque flair for decorated interiors. One of his favorite sports to watch—mixed martial arts—is mostly sweaty, half-naked young men. And he’s a big fan of his male counterparts, often announcing who he’d play in a movie: “They’re perfect models,” he said last year of the military pilots who visited him in the Oval Office; “He looks like the Marlboro Man,” he gushed about the former Iowa state senator; “A young man, a good young man. It is always good to be young and good,” praised the Paraguayan president.
Some of Trump’s allies point out that years before gay marriage was legalized, Trump had gay friends, took pro-gay positions, and allowed gays to join his private club in Palm Beach beginning in the mid-1990s. Ric Grenell became the first openly gay Cabinet member when Trump appointed him acting director of national intelligence. Grenell, now the president’s special envoy, once called Trump “the most pro-gay president in American history,” a title Trump said he was honored to hold.
To be clear: Trump says he is only attracted to women and, in fact, has married three of them. He once hosted the Miss Universe pageant, was caught on tape saying he liked to grab women “by the pussy,” and was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman. More loads have accused him of sexual immorality. (Trump has denied the accusations.) “Women—I love them. Men—no, I have no interest,” Trump confirmed at a Peace Council meeting earlier this year.
But there’s also little doubt that Trump has unabashedly embraced the beauty—the je ne sais quoi—of a certain kind of gayness. Others who sympathize with the president have gone further. Blaze Mediaa conservative publication founded by radio host Glenn Beck, ran a story in 2024 titled “Donald Trump: Our First Gay President,” much as people talked about Bill Clinton being the first Black person. The story notes, in a section titled “Queen of Queens”: “She kisses Hulk Hogan, she weighs in at Fashion Week (‘it was glamorous and exciting! No stars, no fun—just boring’), and her rivalry with the gay community’s Donne Rosie. conflicts.” Pod Save Americaa liberal podcast founded by former aides to President Obama, declared that Trump would be a gay icon, if only he had “liberal social values.” The President, the show’s headline reads, “Claims the White House Ballroom, Loves Music, and Wears Makeup.”
JAmes Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washingtonhe told me that the personal story of Trump, a boy from Queens who made it big in Manhattan, traces the “typical gay story” of men of his era. In another life, he continued, the 79-year-old might be an aging gay man, “living in Wilton Manors, sitting at the bar, making bitter comments to everyone who walks in.” (Of course, Trump’s perch from the Oval Office confers more power than a bar stool, and his comments have rattled the market and sent allies reeling.) “He’s a brown-frozen gay man in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before AIDS,” Kirchick said, referring to the type of gay Trump believes. “It’s a certain age and a certain era. It’s very camp.”
Comedian and podcast host Caleb Hearon considered Trump to be of the “old school gay” era, “because, you know, gays were bad before media training,” he said in an interview with Ziwe Fumudoh on his YouTube comedy show. The president, Hearon continued, should be a “red carpet fashion consultant,” the kind who would say things like: “That dress, honey. I don’t think so!” “That would be amazing. I would watch it every night,” he said. “Instead, he ran for office on a platform of mass deportations, so that’s where things got tough, obviously.”
People close to Trump say he has long been gay-friendly in his actions as a private citizen. In the early days of his career as a software developer, Trump was mentored by Roy Cohn, a prominent and ruthless New York lawyer and political pioneer, who was gay. During the Studio 54 era, Trump enjoyed making cameos. In 2024, Trump quietly allowed a gay wedding at Mar-a-Lago, although he did not attend.
But Trump has also been willing to vilify transgender people, especially athletes, for political gain. The ACLU has issued a severe assessment of Trump’s record on LGBTQ rights, and the Trevor Project, which supports LGBTQ youth, said that access to his hotline increased — a 700 percent increase — the day after he was re-elected. Jonathan Lovitz, senior vice president at the Human Rights Campaign, wrote to me in an email that LGBTQ+ people helped shape the culture Trump experienced as he grew up in New York City. That’s why, he continued, many infidels get angry when Trump engages in certain kinds of camps: “Not because it’s sly (which it is), but because it underscores a deeper confusion: he wants the benefits of a country and a culture that cynics helped create, while promoting policies that keep those same people safe every day.”
Trump’s stance on men’s bodies has also drawn attention. When my colleague Marie-Rose Sheinerman and I dug into examples of these body evaluations, we were struck by their abundance and how much Trump seems to enjoy complimenting other men. He’s given the “beautiful” compliment at least 68 times so far in his second term — or 69 times, if we count the two Thanksgiving turkeys he jointly described as such. He is unapologetic in his preference for Cabinet members and administration officials who seem to come out of the “cast in between”; he praised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is gay, for his Hollywood good looks, before saying appreciatively that “underneath that good exterior is a killer.”
He can never refrain from commenting on the body of brave men: “Look at this man’s muscles!” he said, looking at the young cadets as he delivered a commencement speech at the US Coast Guard Academy last week. Two days later, he took pains to praise New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, calling him a “good guy” and a great poet about his “legs like tree trunks.” And talking about golfer Arnold Palmer in 2024, Trump managed to emphasize his preference for women while also saying about the masculinity of the legend: “I love women, but this guy-this guy-this is a man.” (He also saw Palmer’s powerful swing and “tough clubs,” and his, um, claimed other assets: “When he showered with the other greats, they came out of there—they said, Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.”)
Not surprisingly, late-night hosts and comedians have been eager to play with Trump’s inner gays. Bransen Gates, an actor and social media personality, has become known for his Instagram videos where he takes snippets of Trump’s speeches and humbly puts them together—lips, eyes fixed, fingers wagging—under such classics as “The straight man talking at graduation who is. ‘definitely not gay’” and “When you are in love a young man named Stephen” (Miller, in the case of Trump). the most popular videoaptly titled “Tr*mp was born gay,” Gates responds to Trump’s comments at an October 2020 campaign rally. “I’m going to kiss every man—man and woman, man and woman,” Gates-as-Trump says, with sexually suggestive clapping winks, eye rolls, and light winks. “Look at that boy how handsome he is. Kiss me, not—not with much pleasure, but that’s all right.”
Iand a March Fox News interviewTrump was asked about the Iranian leader’s sexuality, the kind of highly sensitive question that almost any other president would handle with great care. Instead, Trump somehow focused on how bad the “Palestinian regime” is for gays—”Who are the Palestinian gays?” he reflected—and later noted with a laugh that one of his rallying songs, “YMCA,” by People People, is considered the “gay national anthem.”
“I did really well with the gay vote, okay?” he told the locals. (“The gay vote” is a difficult thing to measure, although many polls found that in both the 2020 and 2024 elections, Trump had gay support. However, many voters who identified as LGBT favored his Democratic challengers.)
Paul Baker, author of Camp!: The Story of the Attitude That Conquered the Worldtold me via email that when it comes to Trump, making a distinction between camp and camp is important. The latter is a more self-conscious, ironic adoption of camp. But Trump is “the original, pure form — it’s when someone’s behavior is outrageous, outrageous, rebellious and unintentionally funny,” he said. “The man doesn’t realize he’s being funny or that he’s in camp. He’s pretending to be himself.”
The danger, he continued, is when the camp becomes a distraction from the president’s actual policies, such as executive orders and actions that can. negatively impacting LGBTQ health. When he returned to office, for example, Trump repealed nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ youth in schools, which advocates say could undermine their mental health. “Laugh on Instagram all you like, but don’t let that take away the oxygen from important topics like election reform, protecting democracy, gun control, immigration, health care and access to education in America,” Baker concluded in his email to me.
Kirchick’s husband, Josef Palermo, was the first curator of visual arts at the Kennedy Center, until he was fired after Trump took control of the cultural institution. (Palermo introduced an opt-out agreement to be able to participate publicly-incl essay for Atlantic—his comments about the destruction of the Kennedy Center under Trump.) Before Palermo lost his job last year, the two attended the Kennedy Center Honors event, which Trump hosted, and Kirchick found that he preferred Trump more as a character than as a political leader. Kirchick said that Trump was “great” in the role, describing him as “a combination of Joan Rivers and Don Rickles.” He added angrily: “I wish he would.”
Marie-Rose Sheinerman contributed to this report.
*Image sources: Roberto Schmidt / Getty; Christian Rose / Roger Viollet / Getty; Echoes / Redferns / Getty; Jack Robinson / Hulton Archive / Getty
