COLUMBIA, S.C. — COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Nikki Haley questioned Saturday whether Donald Trump is mentally capable of running for president again after he repeatedly appeared to confuse her with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a campaign speech.
While campaigning in Keene, New Hampshire, Haley referenced Trump’s speech the night before in which he falsely claimed that Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters entered the building stormed to stop the certification. of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump first said that Haley had rejected security offered by his administration on January 6 and then mentioned Haley again, adding: “They destroyed all the information, all the evidence, everything, deleted everything, destroyed everything.”
Trump, 77, has accused Pelosi of rejecting the security he said his administration had offered, but a special House committee to investigate the attack found no evidence to support that claim.
“They’re saying he got confused, he was talking about something else, he’s talking about Nancy Pelosi,” Haley said Saturday.
“He mentioned me several times in that scenario. The concern I have is – I’m not saying anything derogatory – but when you’re dealing with the pressures of the presidency, we can’t have someone else who we question is mentally fit to do this,” Haley said. . “We can’t do that.”
Speaking at a Bloomberg News forum on Saturday in Manchester, Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney referred to Haley’s comments and said Trump “made a pretty obvious blunder last night.”
“It is a distinction without a difference. It’s Nikki and Nancy,” Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told reporters on Saturday evening. “What is the difference?”
During his rally Saturday evening in Manchester, Trump said he had taken a cognitive test and “passed it.”
‘I’ll let you know if things go badly for me. I really think I can tell you,” he added. “I feel like my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?”
Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses on Monday and is the current Republican Party frontrunner, has picked Haley to serve as ambassador to the United Nations and has stepped up his criticism of her campaign as this year’s elections get underway.
On Saturday in New Hampshire, he encountered a solid group of donors from Haley’s home state of South Carolina, including Governor 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 of his own in New Hampshire.
Since Haley, 52, entered the Republican race nearly a year ago, he has advocated “mental competency tests” for older politicians, a swipe at the ages of both Trump and Biden.
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Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price and Jill Colvin in Manchester, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP