Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump departs after speaking at a campaign event at Mullett Arena, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump said Thursday that China's leader would handle Vice President Kamala Harris “like a baby” if she's elected to the White House, as the former president and his top allies increasingly have moved to infantilize 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. “How would he handle her?”

Trump replied, “Like a baby.”

“He’d take all the candy away very quickly,” Trump continued. “She wouldn’t have any idea what happened. It would be like a grand chess master playing a beginner.”

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 Florida senator. The former president also has a long history of belittling women.

But Trump has unleashed a special array of personal — often condescending — attacks against 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’s also 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, combining sexism and deeply personal jeers with referring to Harris as a child, comes with Election Day now barely a week off. 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 Thursday in Tempe, Arizona, where he criticized 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.

Harris has offered her own share of insults against 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 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 coming off “like a child, almost.”

“She’s an empty vessel,” 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.”

Some of Trump's allies have used similar attack lines. On Wednesday, former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson was warming up the crowd at a Trump rally in Georgia when he suggested that Trump was ready to punish the vice president.

“Dad is pissed,” Carlson told the crowd. “And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”

Brenden Dilley, a frequent online poster and fierce defender of Trump, reacted to Harris’ town hall even more viscerally, posting, “This dumb bitch might lose every state if voters see this."

While Dilley doesn’t work for the Trump campaign, the Republican nominee and his team often share memes made by his team.

___

Associated Press reporters Jill Colvin and Jonathan J. Cooper in Tempe, Arizona and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024