US Republican candidate Nikki Haley has questioned Donald Trump’s mental fitness for office after he seemed to confuse her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in one of his rambling campaign speeches.
Haley is far from the first to question Trump’s mental fitness, but at a rally in Keene, New Hampshire on Saturday she brought up the bizarre incident to voters, saying: “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.”
The day before, at Trump’s rally, the former president seemed to repeatedly and incorrectly say that Haley was in charge of Capital security on Jan. 6, 2021, the day when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to stop the presidential certification of Democrat Joe Biden following Trump’s 2020 election loss.
It was actually Pelosi who was in charge of security at the time, with Haley not even being in office.
Trump’s claim that Pelosi turned down security that his administration offered her has also been debunked. A special House committee empaneled to probe the attack found no evidence to support his claim.
“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 because of lots of things like Nikki Haley is in charge of security,” Trump told supporters at the Concord rally. “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”
Responding to Trump’s public gaffe on X (formerly Twitter), his senior campaign advisor Chris LaCivita tried to play it off writing, “Nancy ….Nikki ….its a distinction without a difference.”
How old is too old?
Since launching her campaign 11 months ago, Haley, 52, has called for mental competency tests for politicians over 75, and has suggested it’s time for a “new generational leader”.
Trump, who is 77 himself, is known for frequently throwing digs at the age of Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, saying he’s mentally unfit for office.
In September, however, Trump also mixed up Biden with former President Barack Obama, saying “with Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.”
At his rally on Saturday night in Manchester, Trump said that he took a cognitive test and “aced it.”
“I’ll let you know when I go bad. I really think I’ll be able to tell you,” he added. “I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?”
Ahead of the 2024 US election, age is shaping up to be an important factor as two white men over 75-years-old look to be front-runners for both major parties.
An August poll from The Associated Press– NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 77 per cent of US adults, including 69 per cent of Democrats view Biden as too old for presidential office. The Same poll that over half (51 per cent) of adults, including 28 per cent of Republicans view Trump as too old.