Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley questioned former president Donald Trump’s mental fitness on Saturday after her seemingly confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Last night, Trump is at a rally,” Haley said in a video posted to X. “And he’s going on and on, mentioning me multiple times as to why I didn’t take security during the Capitol riots, why I didn’t handle January 6th better. I wasn’t even in D.C. on January 6th. I wasn’t in office then.”
“They’re saying he got confused, that he was talking about something else, he’s talking about Nancy Pelosi, he mentioned me multiple times in that scenario,” she added. “The concern I have is, I’m not saying anything derogatory, but when you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this.”
Trump’s comments came during a rally in Concord, N.H. on Friday when he was discussing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it,” Trump said. “Because of lots of things … like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”
Trump, for his part, defended the comments during a rally in Manchester, N.H., on Saturday.
“A lot of times I’ll say that President Obama is doing a lousy job, meaning that Obama is running the show,” Trump said during his rally. “They’ll say, Donald Trump doesn’t know who our president is. No, no. A few months ago I took a cognitive test my doctor gave me, I said give me a cognitive test just we can, you know, and I aced it. I also took one when I was in the White House.”
“I’ll let you know when I go bad,” Trump later added. “I really [don’t] think I will be able to tell you because someday we go bad.”
While Haley has called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over age 75, the 77-year-old defended his age.
“They always say, like Haley, she talks about, ‘yeah, we don’t need 80-year-old,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t mind being 80, but I am 77, that’s a big difference.”
The back-and-forth comes days before New Hampshire’s open primary, which is seen as Haley’s last chance to stop Trump’s rapid march to the nomination as the state’s independent voters are seen as likely to be more open to Haley’s candidacy than Iowa’s more conservative base.
A RealClearPolitics average of New Hampshire polling finds Trump leading with 44.5 percent of the vote, with Haley following at 31.3 percent. The average still includes Chris Christie drawing 11 percent support before his exit from the race earlier this month. Christie supporters are expected to get in line behind Haley, but as we reported last week, some of Christie’s most ardent supporters aren’t sold on the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.