Donald Trump is closing out his election campaign by bringing up the fact that he’d like to “hit back” at former first lady Michelle Obama.

At a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Monday, the GOP candidate asked a crowd of supporters whether he was “allowed to hit her now” after claiming that the former first lady had “hit me” — an apparent reference to her recent speech calling Trump “a criminal and an abuser.”

Trump had already appeared to threaten Michelle Obama at a previous rally, noting ominously that she’d made “a big mistake” by criticizing him, but his latest outburst is an escalation in his language and appears to deliberately lean into the ambiguity of the word “hit.”

Apparently recounting a conversation with his advisers, Trump said, “Michelle ... I was so nice to her out of respect. She hit me the other day. I was going to say: ‘Am I allowed to hit her now?’ They said: ‘Take it easy, sir.’ My geniuses, they said, ‘Just take it easy.’ ‘What do you mean? She said that about me, I can’t hit back?’ ‘Sir, you’re winning. Just relax.’”

“Is that good or bad advice?” he asked the crowd. “I think it’s neutral.”

He then asked, “What do the ladies of North Carolina think, hit back or just relax?” before admitting, “I’d actually love to hit back, but we’ll hold it a little while.”

Trump’s comments about the former first lady followed his now-routine attacks on her husband, former President Barack Obama, whom Trump called “the great divider.” He also referred to him as “Barack Hussein Obama,” a long-standing racist tactic Trump uses to cast Obama, America’s first Black president, as nefarious and foreign.

It’s unclear precisely which of the former first lady’s comments irked Trump. But at a rally in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Michelle Obama made the case for Harris by comparing the two candidates.

“Instead of someone who’s only in it for themselves, we will have a president who’s in it for you,” she said. “Instead of someone who’d accelerate the dismantling of our women’s reproductive health system, we will have a president who believes in our freedom to make decisions about our own bodies.”

“Instead of a criminal and an abuser, we can have a president who has prosecuted lawbreakers and protected victims,” she added. “Instead of someone who cozies up to dictators and denies elections, we will have a president who will work to strengthen and expand our democracy, and do it all with warmth, joy and grace.”