Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump dances on stage after speaking during a campaign rally at the Thomas & Mack Center, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. | Photo: AP
Donald Trump said on Thursday (Oct 24, 2024) that China’s leader would treat Vice President Kamala Harris “like a baby” if she is elected to the White House, as the former president and his top allies increasingly seek to infantilize the Democratic nominee.
“If somehow Kamala wins, she will have to deal with Xi Jinping,” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said of the Chinese president. “How will he handle her?”
Mr Trump replied: “Like a baby.”
“He would take all the candy away real quick,” Mr. Trump continued. “She had no idea what had happened. It would be like a great chess master playing with a beginner.”
Mr. Trump has built his political career around insults, inventing taunts for his opponents, going back to his first run for president in 2016, when he denounced Republican primary rivals like Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, as low-energy and “ Little’ Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida. The former president also has a long history of belittling women.
But Mr Trump unleashed a special barrage of personal – often condescending – attacks on Ms Harris, from calling her “lazy” – a word long used to demean black people in racist terms – to insisting she was “stupid person’ and asking if he is ‘on drugs’. He also called Ms Harris, the first woman of color to head a major party ticket, “slow” and accused her of having a “low IQ”.
The latest line of attack, combining sexism and deeply personal taunts with references to Ms Harris as a child, comes with Election Day barely a week away. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the remarks.
The former president, who escalated his already dark and inflammatory rhetoric in the final stretch of the race, spoke at a rally later Thursday in Tempe, Arizona, where he criticized Ms. Harris’s stance on immigration. He accused Ms. Harris of committing an “unholy betrayal of America” and of “orchestrating the most outrageous betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted on our people,” even though crime has fallen.
At an evening event in Las Vegas, Mr. Trump compared Ms. Harris to a “vulture” in the way he characterized her approach to tax increases.
“Even after Kamala ruined your economy with inflation, she came after you with tip income, kind of like a vulture,” Mr. Trump said. “If she gets four more years, Kamala Harris will pick your pockets.”
Mr. Harris offered his share of insults against Mr. Trump, calling him “increasingly erratic and erratic.” During a CNN town hall on Wednesday, she also called Mr Trump a “fascist”. She was scheduled to join a rally Thursday night in suburban Atlanta with former President Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen.
In his interview with Mr Hewitt on Thursday morning, Mr Trump said he had watched Ms Harris’ town hall on CNN and described her as “almost like a child”.
“She is an empty vessel,” Mr. Trump said. “But it’s been beautifully pushed by a very smart, very powerful, very liberal, viciously liberal, but very, very smart, powerful party called the Democrats.” Some of Mr. Trump’s allies have used similar lines of attack. On Wednesday, ex Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson was warming up the crowd at a Trump rally in Georgia when he hinted that Mr. Trump was ready to punish the vice president.
“Dad is angry,” Mr. Carlson told the crowd. “And when dad comes home, you know what he says? You were a bad girl. You’ve been a bad girl and now you’re about to get hit hard.
Published – October 25, 2024, 2:39 PM IST
