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.”

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.’”

Trump would fire Jack Smith ‘within two seconds’

Meanwhile, Thursday Trump that if he wins the White House, he will fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” of taking office.

Trump was asked during the interview with Hewitt whether he would first pardon himself or terminate Smith to remove the legal cloud hanging over him. Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022, has charged the former president over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents.

“It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump responded. “He’ll be one of the first things addressed.”

Trump, who regularly assails Smith and has suggested before that he would fire him if he were president, called Smith a “crooked person.”

Trump, if elected, could order the Justice Department to remove Smith. Trump probably would not be able to do it on his own because Smith is not a presidential appointee.

When Trump, while president, was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump urged his then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, to press the Justice Department to terminate Mueller. McGahn refused.

Smith has brought two federal cases against Trump. One, accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed in July, a decision that Smith is appealing. The other, charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, has been delayed by a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity for official acts made while president.

After Trump said he would fire Smith, Hewitt raised the possibility that Congress could impeach Trump over that move. Trump said he did not believe that would happen.

“I don’t think they’ll impeach me if I fire Jack Smith,” Trump said. “Jack Smith is a scoundrel.”

While Trump criticized Smith, he praised U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who dismissed the classified documents case against the former president in July.

“We had a brave, brilliant judge in Florida,” Trump said. “She’s a brilliant judge, by the way. I don’t know her. I never spoke to her. Never spoke to her. But we had a brave and very brilliant judge.”