President Donald Trump has continued to riff on the physical characteristics of Republican lawmakers when he appears on the stump — and when there is nothing to compliment, he returns to an old favorite: the backside of Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), which Trump recently noticed was “spectacular.”

While many observers have commented on the humbling spectacle of Husted being catcalled before thousands of people, longtime columnist Amanda Marcotte is tying Trump's bizarre rants to something larger.

Writing for Salon in her Friday column, Marcotte explained: “Trump is famously a lifelong heterosexual, so many in the media and on the left are confused. They assume that latent homoerotic yearnings are burbling up, perhaps from the disinhibition that can occur among people who take regular tests for dementia...”

Marcotte noted that Trump's audience “screams” with laughter at the president's comments about a U.S. senator. It is the same laughter, she said, that erupts when Trump goes off on a racist tirade.

“It's a large-scale version of the infamous 'Access Hollywood' tape, where Trump tried to impress the show's host, Billy Bush, with braggadocious claims that he can grab women's genitals and they have to put up with it,” she explained.

Marcotte cited a New York Times report saying that Trump loves making a spectacle out of the way men look, particularly when it gets his MAGA crowd to cheer. Republicans, meanwhile, “have no choice but to grin and pretend they enjoy it.” For Trump, she argued, it is an expression of dominance over GOP leaders with “fancy job titles,” demanding that they flatter him on camera or wear the “ill-fitting shoes he has 'gifted' them.”

According to Marcotte, Husted, like all Republicans, has little to nothing he can run on. Trump, for his part, likely knew almost nothing about Husted before he landed. All Trump knew, Marcotte said, is that he played football — so he turned to what he did know. Husted needed name recognition and a goose in the polls, and Marcotte joked that he was “goosed” in a different way. Had Trump simply described him as a former football player with broad shoulders and chiseled muscles, she argued, no one would have cared. By commenting on Husted's behind, Trump guaranteed that it became the headline.

In Texas, meanwhile, Trump has said the exact opposite about Ken Paxton, who does not dress well, as Trump has observed.

Marcotte argued that it is not merely the applause Trump is after. She pointed to the disinhibition that can come with dementia: studies have found that people with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia simply cannot control themselves.

Lev Parnas, a former friend of the Republican leader, said in April, speaking to Wajahat Ali: “He's not healthy.”

Dr. John Paul Garrison, a clinical and forensic psychologist and an expert in body language, has spent years documenting Trump's decline, particularly when it comes to behaving appropriately.

“When he's talking to people, he looks away. He struggles to maintain appropriate levels of eye contact. Obviously, people look away sometimes, but what I'm talking about are changes in his behavior because this is not what he used to do. We see issues in social cognition, gaze control [and] attention deficits after people have had strokes, when they have dementia, when they have frontal lobe dysfunction, when they have various neurocognitive issues. So, to see him struggling so much with eye contact now to me suggests this is more evidence of that continued decline,” Garrison explained in September.

“I don't know how anyone can see what he posts or watch him in any meeting and think that he's fit for office,” one lawmaker told reporters in May. They were not the only ones noticing Trump's knack for saying the most bizarre things at the most inopportune times; several lawmakers have commented on it.

“We have strategic ambiguity. But [Trump] is just … He's confrontational, inconsistent, erratic,” said one congressman, who then fluttered his tongue in a demonstration of Trump's lucidity.

“I don't trust that man to be able to cognitively make a complete sentence, let alone negotiate with China,” said another.

“I think he's seriously ill,” said still another. “I think Trump needs medical attention and there needs to be an intervention.”

Marcotte closed by saying the one thing it all shows is that “he owns these people. He can define them in reductive, humiliating language, and they have been so hollowed out as human beings that they won't even defend themselves.”

This article is based on reporting published by AlterNet.