Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said China’s leader would handle Vice President Kamala Harris “like a baby” if she is elected to the White House.
The former president and his top allies increasingly have moved to infantilise the Democratic nominee.
“If somehow Kamala wins, she’d have to deal with Xi Jinping,” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said of the Chinese president on Thursday. “How would he handle her?”
Mr Trump replied, “Like a baby.”
“He’d take all the candy away very quickly,” Mr Trump continued.
“She wouldn’t have any idea what happened. It would be like a grand chess master playing a beginner.”
Mr Trump has built his political career around name-calling, inventing jeers for his opponents going back to his first run for president in 2016, when he slammed Republican primary rivals like “Low Energy” Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and “Little” Marco Rubio, the senator also for Florida.
The former president also has a long history of belittling women.
But Mr Trump has unleashed a special array of personal — often condescending — attacks against Ms Harris, from calling her “lazy” — a word long used to demean Black people in racist terms — to insisting she’s a “stupid person” and asking whether she is “on drugs.”
He has also called Ms Harris, the first woman of colour to lead a major-party ticket, “slow” and has accused her of having a “low IQ.”
His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the remarks.
The former president, who has escalated his already dark and inflammatory rhetoric in the race’s final stretch, spoke at a rally later on Thursday in Tempe, Arizona, where he criticised Ms Harris’ handling of immigration.
He accused Harris of perpetrating “a wicked betrayal of America” and having “orchestrated the most egregious betrayal that any leader in American history has ever inflicted upon our people,” even though crime is down.
His campaign was holding an evening event in Las Vegas.
Ms Harris has offered her share of insults against Mr Trump, calling him “increasingly unhinged and unstable.”
During a CNN town hall Wednesday she also called Trump a “fascist.” She was set to join a rally Thursday night in the Atlanta suburbs.
In his Thursday morning interview with Mr Hewitt, Mr Trump said he watched Ms Harris’ town hall on CNN and described her as coming off “like a child, almost.”
“She’s an empty vessel,” Mr Trump said. “But she’s beautifully pushed around by a very smart, very powerful, very liberal, viciously liberal but very, very smart, powerful party called the Democrats.”
