WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump said Thursday that Chinese leader would treat Vice President Kamala Harris “like a baby” if she is elected to the White House, as the former president and his key allies have increasingly turned to infantilizing the Democratic candidate.
“If Kamala somehow wins, she will have to deal with Xi Jinping,” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said of the Chinese president. “How would he treat her?”
Trump replied: “Like a baby.”
“He would take away all the candy real quick,” Trump continued. ‘She would have no idea what happened. It would be like a great chess master playing a beginner.”
Trump has built his political career around name-calling and has coined invective for his opponents, going back to his first bid for president in 2016, when he targeted Republican primary rivals like “Low Energy” Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and “Little Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida. The former president also has a long history of disparaging women.
But Trump has unleashed a singular series of personal — often condescending — attacks on Harris, from calling her “lazy” — a word long used to demean black people in racist terms — to insisting she is a “stupid person” and ask if she is. about medicine.” He has called Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket, “slow” and has accused her of having a “low IQ.”
The latest line of attack, which combines sexism and deeply personal ridicule with references to Harris as a child, comes with Election Day now barely a week away. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the remarks.
The former president, who has escalated his already dark and inflammatory rhetoric in the latter part of the race, spoke later Thursday at a rally in Tempe, Arizona, where he criticized Harris’ handling of immigration. He accused Harris of committing “an evil betrayal of America” and orchestrating “the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted on our people,” even as crime has declined. His campaign held an evening event in Las Vegas.
Harris has leveled her own share of insults against Trump, calling him “increasingly unhinged and unstable.” During a town hall on CNN Wednesday, she also called Trump a “fascist.” She was scheduled to participate in a rally in suburban Atlanta on Thursday evening with former President Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen.
In his Thursday morning interview with Hewitt, Trump said he watched Harris’ town hall on CNN and described her as “almost looking like a child.”
“She is an empty vessel,” Trump said. “But she is being pushed around beautifully by a very smart, very powerful, very liberal, viciously liberal but very, very smart, powerful party called the Democrats.”
Some Trump allies have used similar lines of attack. On Wednesday, former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson was warming up the crowd at a Trump rally in Georgia when he suggested Trump was ready to punish the vice president.
“Dad’s mad,” Carlson told the crowd. ‘And when daddy comes home, you know what he says? “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad girl and now you’re going to get a good spanking.”
Brenden Dilley, a frequent online poster and fierce defender of Trump, reacted even more strongly at Harris’ town hall, writing: “This dumb bitch could lose every state if the voters see this.”
Although Dilley does not work for the Trump campaign, the Republican candidate and his team often share memes created by his team.
___
Associated Press reporters Jill Colvin and Jonathan J. Cooper in Tempe, Arizona, and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
