DULUTH, Ga. — Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson warmed up the crowd at Donald Trump’s rally here Wednesday night with a dark metaphor, bashing Vice President Kamala Harris and declaring that “dad” was coming home to mete out discipline.

“He’s pissed!” Carlson said to extended cheers. “Dad is pissed. … 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,’” Tucker added. “‘No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s 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, and it has to be this way.’”

The riff set the tone for Trump’s rally in the swing state of Georgia less than two weeks from Election Day, underscoring themes of retribution that have long propelled the former president’s campaign. The Republican presidential nominee is pitching himself as a paternalistic protector for the country while also threatening punishment for his critics and enemies — cheered on by a rowdy base of supporters.

“Daddy’s home!” the crowd chanted later after Trump took the stage at Gas South Arena in the Atlanta suburbs.

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The rally took place as Trump’s critics intensified their warnings that the Republican presidential nominee is not a protector but a dangerous authoritarian. Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, had just asserted that his old boss meets the definition of a fascist, and Harris said at her own Wednesday night event that she agrees. Trump has also been criticized for recent comments that the militarycould be deployed against people he has referred to as the “enemy from within,” including Democratic lawmakers. In interviews at early-voting sites in Georgia, it was clear that many voters had heard about the military comments in particular and feared Trump would govern like a “dictator.”

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At Trump’s rally in Duluth, however, the crowd reveled in the idea of father Trump doling out punishments. T-shirts sold outside Trump’s events have long cast him as a “Daddy” figure, but Carlson took that idea much further on Wednesday.

James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesman, simply declared it “weird.”

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In an hour-and-a-half-long speech, Trump reprised some of his favorite attacks on Harris, mispronounced her name and took aim at her intelligence. “She’s a low-IQ person,” he said. “She’s an international joke,” he added later.

Trump also brought up President Joe Biden’s rhetoric about him this week. “We’ve got to lock him up,” Biden said Tuesday, before seeking to clarify: “Politically lock him up.”

Trump was convicted this year of falsifying business records. Trump has not been sentenced, and other criminal charges have yet to go to trial.

“He said, ‘We got to lock him up.’ This is illegal,” Trump said in Duluth.

The Republican presidential nominee went on his usual tangents. At one point he noted, “I don’t like my hair tonight.” At another, he said he decided against recording his White House conversations with world leaders because of the tapes that helped end Richard M. Nixon’s presidency. A conspicuous gap in a recording of Nixon talking to his chief of staff contributed to the Watergate corruption scandal that led Nixon to resign.

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Trump said he wished he had tapes of his negotiations with foreign leaders to show off.

“The problem is then I start thinking about Richard Nixon did that, and I say, ‘You know, let’s do without the tape. We’ll do without the tape,’” he said.

Trump also repeated his claim that CBS’s “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with Harris to obfuscate her real response and again dangled a threat to sue — the same day that the network’s lawyers told the former president his demands were built on a “faulty premise.”

“They changed her answer. … Should we sue ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS?” Trump asked the crowd.

A host of surrogates got the crowd fired up before Trump’s appearance at the event held with the conservative group Turning Point Action. There was right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, who thanked Georgia authorities for giving Trump a great mug shot; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his independent presidential bid to endorse Trump; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who has also become a vocal Trump ally; and country singer Jason Aldean, among others.

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Carlson, who was fired from Fox last year, assured the crowd they were not “freaks and misfits,” and railed against Democrats as “the party of weak men and unhappy women.” He bashed Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, a frequent target of crude insults at Trump events.

“None of the normal people are supporting the Democratic machine,” Carlson said. “Tim Walz is supporting the Democratic machine. A man you would never allow to babysit your own children.”

The crowd at one point broke into chants of “Tampon Tim!” — a Trump rally staple that alludes to a Minnesota bill Walz signed into law to provide access to menstrual products in public schools.

Later, Carlson turned to Harris, declaring that the vice president “has no skills” and asking: “How did we wind up with a system where Kamala Harris, she couldn’t change the tire on your truck, much less drive it. How did she wind up at the top of the pyramid?”

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“You can’t allow that,” he continued, segueing into his metaphor about disciplining children and telling the audience that “if you allow your 2-year-old to smear the contests of his diapers on the wall of your living room, and you do nothing about it … you’re going to get more of it.”

The “spanking” comments that followed drew ridicule online, echoing past backlash to comments about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). In 2021, a Michigan Republican leader apologized after saying the state Senate had “spanked” Whitmer.

But the language was not out of place at a Trump rally, where he and his surrogates routinely lob harsh and crude insults. As rallygoers filtered out afterward, they were met with T-shirt vendors shouting, “Say No to the Ho!” — a gendered slogan targeting Harris that has become a fixture at the former president’s events.

Jonathan Edwards and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.