COLUMBIA, South Carolina — COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Nikki Haley on Saturday questioned whether Donald Trump is mentally capable of being president again after he repeatedly appeared to confuse her with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a speech campaign.
While campaigning in Keene, New Hampshire, Haley referenced Trump’s speech the night before, in which he wrongly claimed that Haley was in charge of Capitol security on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. in the building seeking to stop the certification. of his defeat against Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump first said Haley rejected security offered by his administration on Jan. 6 and then mentioned Haley again, adding, “They destroyed all the information, all the evidence, everything, they erased it and they destroyed it all.”
Trump, 77, accused Pelosi of rejecting security he says his administration offered, but a special House committee created to investigate the attack found no evidence to support that claim.
“They say he got confused, that he was talking about something else, that he was talking about Nancy Pelosi,” Haley said Saturday.
“He mentioned me several times on that stage. The concern I have is, I’m not saying anything derogatory, but when it comes to the pressures of the presidency, we can’t have someone else who we question if he’s mentally fit to do this,” Haley said. . “We can not”.
Speaking at a Bloomberg News forum Saturday in Manchester, Haley’s campaign manager Betsy Ankney referenced Haley’s comments and said Trump “made a pretty glaring mistake last night.”
“It is a distinction without a difference. It’s Nikki and Nancy,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita told reporters Saturday night. “What is the difference?”
At his Saturday night rally in Manchester, Trump said he took a cognitive test and “passed it.”
“I’ll let you know when things go wrong. I really think I’ll be able to tell you,” she added. “I feel like my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?”.
Trump, who won Monday’s Iowa caucuses and is the current GOP front-runner, tapped Haley to be his ambassador to the United Nations and has intensified his criticism of her campaign as the year’s voting progressed.
On Saturday, he visited New Hampshire with a strong complement of supporters from Haley’s home state of South Carolina, including Gov. Henry McMaster and several members of the U.S. House of Representatives. A day earlier, Sen. Tim Scott, who ended his own 2024 bid in November and was appointed to the Senate by Haley in 2012, endorsed Trump over Haley in a stirring call-and-response speech in New Hampshire.
Since entering the Republican race nearly a year ago, Haley, 52, has advocated for “mental competency tests” for older politicians, a blow to the ages of both Trump and Biden.
___
Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price and Jill Colvin in Manchester, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
___
You can contact Meg Kinnard at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP