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In a disturbing speech opening up for Donald Trump at a campaign stop in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson compared the United States to a “bad little girl” deserving of physical abuse from her father.
Carlson spoke at an event hosted by Turning Point Action, the political arm of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump organization focused on young voters. In his remarks, he used a good amount of time creepily dramatizing a story of what sounds like domestic violence and giving it a positive spin, drawing raucous applause from the crowd.
Carlson, who’s scheduled to headline an event with Trump in Arizona on Halloween, told the crowd in Georgia:
There has to be a point at which Dad comes home. Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home. And he’s pissed. Dad is pissed. He’s not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior and he’s going to have to let them know.
He continued:
'Get to your room right now and think about what you did!' 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. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.'
The former Fox News host closed his speech by encouraging attendees to deny Vice President Kamala Harris’ victory if she’s named the winner: “When they tell you they’ve won, no! You can look them straight in the face and say, ‘I’m sorry. Dad’s home. And he’s pissed.’”
And when Trump walked out, attendees eerily called him “Daddy Don” and hollered “Daddy’s home.”
Carlson’s outrageous speech — in which he described children ranging from 2 years old to 15 years old needing to be punished — prompted swift backlash online for mirroring abuser talk. I’ve been writing a lot lately about the MAGA movement’s reliance on toxic masculinity. But few examples embody that crisis quite like this one.
It’s more than a little odd that Carlson has this dramatized dialogue between an abusive father and a child so readily available in his mind. A family therapist would have a field day with that.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know this is part of a pattern. Earlier this year, Carlson claimed America was in need of more fathers willing to beat up employees at their children’s schools, so he seems to idolize violent father figures. Or, perhaps, just violent men in general.
As eerie as it sounded to me, I listened to this speech and thought to myself how horrifying it must’ve been for actual victims of domestic violence to hear this crowd of thousands cheering a made-up story of an angry father returning home to use violence against his family. I imagine there are many people — women and men — who know the experience of having an abusive husband or father and bristled at it being portrayed positively.
But this is what it looks and sounds like when a political movement is priming you for fascism. The United States is not Trump’s “house,” and the American people are not his “bad little girls,” destined to live under his violent dominion.
Listening to his most fervent followers, though, it’s clear that’s the vision they have for the nation: one in which Trump is America’s “Daddy” — a self-proclaimed protector who abuses the people he claims to protect.