It’s the stuff of political romance novels. A frustrated, angry bear of a president is roaring in the Oval Office about how people refuse to submit to him. Republicans in Congress over the Epstein files, Democrats who won’t get on board with anything — except those eight senators who voted to reopen the government and gave him everything he wanted. Then there’s the newly elected “little communist” who will soon take office as mayor of New York City. No federal funds for him and the Big Apple, which also happens to be the president’s hometown. He flings his lunch against the wall, shattering a piece of Nancy Reagan’s china and leaving a trail of ketchup and hamburger grease on the wallpaper and faux gilt sconce recently procured from Home Depot.
Then: a knock on the door. His three o’clock has arrived, the same little communist he has raged against behind closed doors and before the media. “Mr. President,” the beautiful man says as he enters, extending his silver-ringed hand in a firm greeting.
The mood in the room shifts. The president studies his guest, noting his kind, steely brown eyes and neatly trimmed beard. He looks at his dark suit and flashes an approving smile.
No, this isn’t a twisted take on “Red, White and Royal Blue.” It’s a scene from Friday afternoon at the Trump White House, imagined for sure, but not entirely outside of the realm of possibility.
Donald Trump has a weakness for men — handsome younger men, that is, especially if they’re wearing suits. It’s not some latent gayness. Except who knows, maybe it is; he does have a weakness for “YMCA” and showtunes, which he has taken to blasting across Jacqueline Kennedy’s once and future Rose Garden, and god knows the world has seen its share of queer tyrants and angry queens.
After he spent months attacking Zohran Mamdani, Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that he would host the mayor-elect for a closed door meeting came as a surprise, with many predicting, based on the insults the two had traded, it would be a slugfest. By all accounts, they were wrong. A POLITICO headline said it all: “Trump, Mamdani make love — not war.”
The president effusively complimented Mamdani’s win and predicted success. “I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” he said. “The better he does, the happier I am… I will say, there’s no difference in party… He has a chance to really do something great for New York.” Where Trump had threatened to withhold federal funds if Mamdani was elected, he now pledged the administration would “be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true.”
Remarkably, the president even admitted to a reporter that he would feel comfortable living in New York City with Mamdani as mayor. “Yeah, I would, I really would,” he said. In an effort to hitch himself and MAGA to Mamdani’s agenda, Trump made a remarkable claim: “Some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have.”
They’re really not. But no matter. Trump’s political flirting with the incoming mayor was itself revealing. He recognizes Mamdani as a powerful force, a fellow populist who, like the president, ran as an outsider against establishment candidates in his party and won. More importantly, he wanted to be seen cozying up to the mayor-elect.
After a brutal few weeks that have seen the GOP roundly drubbed at the polls in off-year elections, congressional Republicans openly defy his orders against releasing the Epstein files (which forced him to relent, a rarity), a 43-day government shutdown, declining poll numbers and speculation about his health, the president knew he needed to seize control of the narrative.
But Trump’s turnabout with Mamdani is not a one-off. It’s part of a larger pattern of romancing younger men on the national and international stage, often ones he has attacked. His seductions are strategic and rooted in projection…
But Trump’s turnabout with Mamdani is not a one-off. It’s part of a larger pattern of romancing younger men on the national and international stage, often ones he has attacked. His seductions are strategic and rooted in projection; he wants to prove to the men, and likely to himself, that he is just as dominant and virile as they are. Moreover, Trump times his courtship for a moment when he wants or needs something from his prey — concessions, actions or, as with Mamdani, simply to bask before the media in a measure of reflected glory.
Nowhere has this penchant been more on display than in Trump’s interactions with Emmanuel Macron. After a reportedly tense meeting in the spring of 2017, Trump began displaying a “tenderness” for his French counterpart in what one journalist termed the “Art of the Feel.” When Macron visited the White House in April 2018, Trump gave him a double-cheek kiss during the arrival ceremony — only to perform the same action moments later, along with a long handshake. Later that day in the Oval Office, Trump brushed what he described as a bit of dandruff from Macron’s shoulder. “We need to make him perfect,” he said. “He is perfect.”
Since that visit eight years ago, the two presidents have had their share of differences, most notably over Ukraine. In August, on the heels of Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Macron convened six other European leaders to drop everything and fly to Washington to bolster Volodymyr Zelenskyy against waning support for Ukraine from the administration. The French president is now trying to head off an abysmal peace deal proposed by Trump and Putin, who would pledge to end his war of aggression by paying off Ukraine in exchange for ceding territory and cutting the military.
On Saturday, Macron threw cold water on the plan, saying it “can’t simply be an American proposal” and that it required “broader consultation” with European leaders. Despite the rising tensions, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has continued to characterize Trump’s relationship with Macron as “very strong.”
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The dashing and war-weary Zelenskyy has himself been the subject of the president’s verbal abuse and wooing. He famously faced a river of rage from Trump and Vice President JD Vance during an Oval Office meeting in February, which included accusations of him being ungrateful for America’s support of Ukraine during Russia’s war of aggression and for showing disrespect by appearing at the White House in a military-style black shirt emblazoned with the Ukrainian trident rather than a suit. (Since the war began, Zelenskyy has typically shunned suits for clothing that evokes field gear or battle dress to express solidarity with his country’s soldiers.) After the heated meeting ended, Zelenskyy was ejected from the White House.
Two months later, on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican, Trump huddled with Zelenskyy — who was wearing a dressier black military-style field jacket and trousers that GQ hailed as “both sober and on-brand” — and the chat seemed to mark a thaw in their relationship. During another White House meeting in October, Zelenskyy wore a sober black jacket and received the president’s ultimate compliment: “I think he looks beautiful in his jacket. I hope people notice.”
Then there’s Vance, who wouldn’t normally merit a mention in such company. He apparently won Trump over in the 2024 veepstakes for being, at least in the president’s eyes, “one handsome son-of-a-bitch,” according to POLITICO national political correspondent Meredith McGraw’s book “Trump in Exile.”
Trump’s man-crush was years in the making — and involved a case of rhetorical sado-masochism. Following the president’s surprise win in 2016, Vance became an overnight sensation as the synthetic hillbilly oracle who could supposedly divine, to borrow a phrase from Trump’s vanquished rival Hillary Clinton, what happened. The author of the now-infamous “Hillbilly Elegy,” while arguing that Trump had skillfully channeled the anger of white working-class voters in Appalachia and beyond who felt left behind and othered, lashed out against the president. Vance was, he said, a “Never Trump guy.” Trump was “noxious,” “reprehensible” and, in that memorable and spot-on turn of phrase, “cultural heroin.”
Five years later, during Trump’s post-presidency exile at Mar-a-Lago, Vance came calling for his endorsement in the 2022 Ohio Senate race. “I like you but you said some really nasty things about me,” Trump said. Vance worked to make amends, and after the meeting, the New York Times reported, Trump repeatedly mentioned Vance’s “beautiful blue eyes” to allies, adding that the soon-to-be senator was intelligent, “great on TV and a killer at the debates.” (The president apparently didn’t bring up the eyeliner.)
Other men have also found themselves the object of Trump’s affections, including former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Trump dubbed a “good guy, nice-looking guy” before things soured between them, and Britain’s Prince William, whom the president has sometimes seemed fixated on, calling him “a good-looking guy [who] looked really, very handsome” following a bilateral meeting in Paris where they both attended the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. (As much as the president has slagged off Harry and Meghan, William’s estranged brother and sister-in-law, it’s practically a given that Trump would fall for the Duke of Sussex if they were to meet.)
So what are we to make of the president whose eye — and entire attitude — can be turned by handsome men in suits? At the very least, it presents those men with an opportunity to advance their causes, as long as they are willing to play Trump’s game.
With his recent appearance in Trump’s company in a black suit jacket, Zelenskyy seems to be trying to do just that. Reports indicate that Trump has given him until Thursday to accept the peace deal, which heavily favors Putin. After nearly four years of fighting, those terms would be a bitter pill for the Ukrainian president to swallow. My advice? Zelenskyy should take the first flight to D.C. — and arrive at the West Wing clad in Tom Ford, with a dash of eyeliner for good measure.
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