‘Daddy’s House’: Tucker Carlson’s Strange Troll Distills Trump’s False Promise to Male Voters

It seems accidental, but there is There’s no denying Tucker Carlson’s moment.. You probably didn’t know that a new story about Jeffrey Epstein feeding sexual assault victims to donald trump had made the news when he heated up a MAGA rally with a fantasy tinged with incest and pedophilia about the Republican candidate. Comparing liberals to a 15-year-old girl slamming her bedroom door in a tantrum, Carlson waxed poetic about the sexualized abuse of a minor.

“When daddy comes home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad girl and right now you’re getting a vigorous beating,” Carlson fantasized, as the crowd of young conservatives cheered frantically. Meanwhile, The Guardian was launching new accusations of sexual abuse. against Trump, this time in the context of his long friendship with the notorious pedophile Epstein. Former model Stacey Williams, unaware of Epstein’s sex crimes, briefly dated the deceased criminal in the ’90s. During this time, she alleges, Epstein caught her with Trump, who sexually assaulted her in front of Epstein. She says she saw Epstein and Trump share smiles during the assault.

Sexual abuse as a bonding ritual between men was also the topic of Carlson’s “daddy” speech on Wednesday. As she repeatedly spoke of the joy of giving a teenage girl “a vigorous beating because you’ve been a bad girl,” the crowd at the rally went wild. When Trump took the stage, they chanted “daddy’s house,” in celebration of a man who a jury ruled sexually assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll around the same time Williams claims he was assaulted. Trump himself has bragged about sexually assaulting womenwhich he described in dizzying detail in the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

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Trump’s love of sexual violence turns off most voters, but as the sexual assault rhetoric at the Georgia rally shows, the hardcore MAGA crowd loves this stuff. Sexual assault is a coward’s way of feeling powerful. Like kicking puppies or abusing children, it involves inflicting pain and humiliation on someone smaller, often after catching them, as Trump did to Carroll in a department store dressing room. Or, in Carlson’s fantasies, since the victim is her son (she made sure to emphasize that the children “live in her house”), she has nowhere to escape. Sexual abuse is for men who are too weak and pathetic to mess with people their own size. Therefore, it is perfect for Trump and his fans who want to live out this fantasy of domination vicariously.

This election will likely have an unprecedented gender gap because Trump’s overtly sexist message is absorbing male voters while driving away women. From Carlson’s spanking fantasies to Trump’s misogynistic insults to Vice President Kamala Harris to the use of “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” as accompanying music From his speech to his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, criticizing “childless cat ladies,” the Trump campaign’s message to men is not subtle: Vote for Trump and he will subdue women. As Paul Waldman argued in his newsletterTrump is an aspirational figure because “he is sexist, racist, crude and lewd, and no one can tell him not to be.”

As the cheers at the Georgia rally demonstrate, this fantasy has a lot of power among Trump voters. But, Waldman notes, when it comes to anything material Trump can offer male voters, the answer is “precisely nothing.” He is not interested in helping them get jobs, education, housing, wealth, or anything that could substantially improve their lives. And despite the misogyny of the message, Trump cannot “ban women from demanding that their partners treat them as equals or obtain college degrees.” Men are also not helped by the abortion bans that Trump caused during his first term and that will be expanded if he returns to the White House. Sure, Trump incel fans may dream of catching a woman with a pregnancy, but in reality, forced parenthood tends to be detrimental to the economic future of men and women.

What Trump offers men is, I would argue, even worse than nothing. The cheap thrill of misogyny offered by rhetoric like Carlson’s is obviously fun for many men. There’s a sugar rush from blaming women for all your problems, screaming that you’d like to inflict violence on them for what Carlson described as “disobedient.” But no matter how adrenaline-pumping the virulent misogyny is right now, it will only make men’s problems much worse in the long run.

We’ve all heard a lot about the crisis of male loneliness and how masculinity hustlers like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson exploit their audience’s gender insecurities to sell them snake oil and right-wing politics. Trump is taking advantage of the same scam and, with his various interviews with influential people in masculinityleveraging the same audience. What is less discussed, however, is how the “cures” offered by influencers and the MAGA movement simply make men’s problems worse.

Can’t get a woman to date you, much less marry you? Becoming a bile-spewing woman-hater won’t help. Can’t get a job or a promotion at work? Refusing to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to get ahead because you think you are effeminate will prevent you from moving forward. Even the implicit promise of a male-oriented community is a phantom. The hypercompetitiveness and superficiality of this toxic masculinity is not conducive to the development of true friendships with other men. When you adopt antisocial behavior as a model of masculinity, it’s no surprise that no one wants to be around you.

We can see this in the story of the sociopathic imitation of a friendship between Trump and Epstein. No doubt, when they sexually assaulted girls and women and smiled at each other, they felt powerful. (Although, again, nothing is more cowardly than picking on people who can’t defend themselves.) But it’s also telling where they ended up. Epstein committed suicide in prison. Trump, if he can’t win the presidency, could also go to prison. But even if he is saved from that fate, no one could mistake him for a happy person. He is angry, exhausted and sick.

And for a person surrounded by parasites, she also seems very alone. Even with the threat of losing alimony hanging over their heads, they can barely get Melania Trump around her husband, even for a photo shoot. His children did not even appear at his trial until his absence became so noticeable that it threatened his political and, therefore, economic future. Whatever he has with Laura Loomer, it’s clearly just a power grab on her part and not genuine affection. A former adult film actress makes fun of his penis in public.

The worst part is that Trump, for all his deranged misery, is still better off than the foolish bigots who use him as a role model. He has money and a lot of people who kiss his ring because he has power. All they have is the opportunity to pay Elon Musk $8 a month so he can call feminists “cat ladies” on Twitter. It’s not that they deserve pity. Being a better man is free.