Politics
Tucker Carlson’s ‘skin-crawlingly creepy’ description of Donald Trump
At a Wednesday rally for Donald Trump in Duluth, Georgia, disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson showed up in the guise of an emcee from a psychosexual nightmare realm.
After describing the American public as “a 2-year-old smearing the contents of his diapers on the wall” and “a hormone-addled 15-year-old girl slamming the door and giving you the finger,” a red-faced Carlson proposed a solution. “There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” he said, to full-throated cheers from the crowd. “Dad comes home and he’s pissed. He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them, because they’re his children. … 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. 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.”
And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.
TUCKER CARLSON AT A TRUMP RALLY IN DULUTH, GA
The crowd went wild. And when Donald Trump came to the stage, it greeted him with rapturous cries of “Daddy’s home.” This segment of the nation, it seems, is eager for a spanking. Or at least titillated at the prospect of pain inflicted on others. This is not a new phenomenon within the MAGA movement, which has always been keen on the pain of those it deems wayward — but it is a florid illustration of the way patriarchal family dynamics and punishment stand at the center of contemporary right-wing morality.
Carlson, of course, is hardly the first person to conceptualize the nation as a family, although he may be the first to engage in a blissed-out ode to spanking on C-SPAN. George Lakoff, linguist and philosopher, posited that conservative ideologies rely on a “strict father” metaphor to conceptualize the nation and how it should be ruled. In his 2006 book “Thinking Points,” Lakoff explained that in this model, “The strict father is the moral authority in the family; he knows right from wrong, is inherently moral, and heads the household. … Obedience to the father is moral; disobedience is immoral. … When children disobey, the father is obligated to punish, providing an incentive to avoid punishment.”
Authoritarian conservatives, Lakoff argues, apply the strict-father model “not just to all issues but to governing itself.” In this vision, the state and its leader adopts both absolute control and the moral necessity to punish.
But Carlson’s words might have had a special resonance for a particular breed of authoritarian conservative: members of the evangelical right, who have been Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers; 77% of white evangelical protestants voted for Trump in 2016, and 85% did in 2020. Carlson — a maestro at knowingly appealing to the far-right masses — utilized a skin-crawling, sexualized misogyny in the culmination of his metaphor. But his central appeal to an angry father was consonant with a 50-year movement on the Christian right, one in which tens of millions of Americans have experienced, firsthand, the consequences of disobeying Daddy.
In the 1970s, in response to the student-led social revolutions of the 1960s — civil rights, feminism and gay rights — a newly awakened religious right created a movement designed to quash the impulses of rebellious youth. It was called “biblical parenting.” Its first megahit was James Dobson’s incredibly cruel book “Dare to Discipline,” which instructed parents, in great detail, to take a “rod of correction”-centric approach to child rearing. Dobson, founder of the evangelical institution Focus on the Family, recommends regularly spanking children from the ages of 18 months to 10 years old, with a spanking “of sufficient magnitude to cause tears.” This will efficiently quash “willful, haughty disobedience.”
Published in 1970, the book quickly sold millions of copies and launched a movement that centered God, and the rod, in child rearing. It’s a movement that has endured in millions of households across America, and across generations — leading to a new cadre of people, like the baying crowd in Duluth, for whom authoritarian principles were first nurtured in the home.
For my recently released book, “Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America,” I reviewed 50 years’ worth of evangelical parenting manuals, from 1970 to 2017, and conducted interviews with nearly 150 former evangelicals who were raised according to “biblical parenting” principles. Evangelicals also evince a consistently higher approval toward corporal punishment in polling than other groups, a case of successful propaganda enforced with paddles, switches, sticks and hands. The through line throughout decades of these parenting manuals, and in testimonies, was an emphasis on corporal punishment, sometimes brutal, in order to enforce, in the words of youth-centered ministry Youth With a Mission, “instant, joyful obedience.”
In this family model, the strict father isn’t just the moral core of the household; he is also its spiritual head, with the mother as a submissive co-enforcer. Obedience to parents, according to these texts, is both a necessary prelude for and expression of obedience to God. The stakes are existentially high: One frequently cited verse is Proverbs 23:13 — “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.” This system coerces parents into using physical violence on their children in order to save their souls. And in an extension of Lakoff’s “strict father” model of the nation, this model of the family, predicated on obedience enforced with physical violence, creates an authoritarian politics in its practitioners.
The best way to rebuke authoritarianism is to not just rebuke it, but to defeat it and make it look ridiculous and weak.
Consider that a child who has been systemically beaten in the name of God since toddlerhood grows up to be accustomed to brutality and to exhibiting instant and joyful obedience to authority no matter how capricious or unjust. Someone who empathizes with the aggressor to survive, and is inured to brutality by repeatedly being subjected to it. When you ask what might motivate a crowd of people to cheer on the idea of a national spanking — to picture, with approval, a nation submitting to punishment by an abusive father as just and righteous, a necessary corrective to disobedience — you might not have to look any further than the kitchen tables they were raised around as kids, where wooden spoons were broken on their backs.
The best way to rebuke authoritarianism, to break the tyranny of the strict father, is to not just rebuke it, but to defeat it and make it look ridiculous and weak. Mockery and defeat undoes the authoritarian more effectively than violence. When a system is predicated on a cartoonish hypermasculinity, the solution is to treat its leaders as deserving of ridicule, not fear. And until voting ends next month, we have the chance to do just that. To disobey, with glee and en masse, the edict of this punitive would-be father. He’s not our dad. He’s just a man on a mission of punishment, and we can — and must — deny him that chance.
Talia Lavin is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, GQ, The Village Voice, The New Republic and many more publications. She is the author of the books “Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy” (Hachette Books, 2020) and “Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America” (October 2024). Her newsletter, The Sword and the Sandwich, is featured in Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
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Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
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