Tucker Carlson joins Trump at Halloween rally after 'scary' speech about 'angry dad'

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Tucker Carlson will now join Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Halloween after being criticized for his bizarre campaign speech in which he compared the former president to a “dad” who comes home to give his “bad little girl” a “strong one.” Giving a beating “caused a stir.”

The former Fox News host is hosting an event billed as a hurricane relief event in the battleground state of Arizona on October 31 – just five days before Election Day. Trump is one of the guests expected to attend the event.

Carlson's latest foray into Trump's campaign comes days after he gave a speech on behalf of the Republican presidential candidate at the Turning Point USA meeting in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday evening.

At the event, he told the crowd that while he has covered many political rallies throughout his career as a journalist, he has never spoken at one, before comparing American society under Joe Biden to a family home riddled with unrest and tensions between parents and children.

“There has to be a point where daddy comes home,” Carlson told his audience, referring to Trump.

“Yes, that's right. Dad comes home. And he's angry. Dad is angry. And when daddy comes home, do you know what he says? “You were a bad girl.” You were a bad little girl and now you're getting a severe beating. You get a severe beating because you were a bad girl. And it has to be like this'.”

He continued, “‘And no, it won’t hurt me any more than it hurts you. No, it's not that. I'm not going to lie, it will hurt you a lot more than it hurt me. And you deserve it.'”

Carlson's analogy inevitably drew plenty of ridicule online and caught the attention of late-night comics, who had a field day.

To The Late Show with Stephen Colbertthe presenter introduced his segment by describing the presenter as a “formerly relevant TV idiot” and after playing the offending clip simply asked: “Are you okay at home, Tuck?”

To The Daily Showremarked Michael Kosta: “This may be why you have never been invited to speak at a political rally before.

“I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy: Inflation is like a babysitter and it has been naughty.”

To Late Night with Seth MeyersThe moderator also interpreted the speech as a confession by Carlson about his darkest erotic fantasies and concluded: “I'm just glad he's standing behind a podium! You know, most people just delete their browser history, they don’t mention it in their speeches.”

Perhaps the most devastating reaction of all came from Chris Hayes on MSNBC, who told Carlson: “First of all, get therapy.

“Second, this isn’t just the creepy fantasy of a disgraced TV personality with mommy issues that you can see from space, or one of those weird right-wing podcasts.

“He said this on a national level, as part of the Republican presidential campaign. Warming up for a man a jury of his peers found guilty of sexual assault after he defamed the woman who said Donald Trump raped her in a locker room.”

Hayes continued: “The Republican Party is now explicitly waging a campaign of male dominance. Trump is your daddy.

“And he’s ready to put all the bad women, as he calls them, in their place.”

Carlson left Fox in April 2023 under acrimonious circumstances after the network paid more than $787 million to settle a lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over false statements and conspiracy theories the company spread following the 2020 election, which Trump's unsubstantiated claims that voting machines were rigged to rob him of victory amplified.

Text messages released as part of that lawsuit showed that Carlson privately held a very different opinion of Trump than the one he expressed on the air, with the journalist calling the politician a “demonic force” in one such instance.

He has since hosted his own show on X and recently interviewed the company's CEO Elon Musk, now an avid Trump supporter.

Carlson made headlines around the world earlier this year when he visited Russia to interview Vladimir Putin and also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.