GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley responded to former President Donald Trump’s gaffe from Friday night, in which he confused her with Nancy Pelosi and suggested that she had something to do with the security failures at the US Capitol on January 6.
“Last night, Trump is at a rally and he’s going on and on mentioning me several times as to why I didn’t take security during the Capitol riots,” she told an audience in Keene, New Hampshire. “I wasn’t even in DC on January 6.”
“The concern I have is—I’m not saying anything derogatory,” she went on, “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 it.”
While the attack was open, her tone and measured words suggest that Haley is still pulling her punches where the 77-year-old former president is concerned. She also seemed to avoid directly criticizing Trump in a Saturday Fox News interview, where she took pains to suggest she believes Trump’s mind is sharper than President Joe Biden’s.
“It’s the same reason why I want mental competency tests for people in Congress,” she told host Neil Cavuto. “I’m not saying that this is a Joe Biden situation, but I’m saying, are we really going to go and have two eighty-year-olds running for president?”
She continued: “We need people at the top of their game. We need people that are focusing on national security. These are people making decisions on the future of our economy. Do we really want them throwing out names and getting things wrong when they’re 80 and having to deal with Putin and Xi and Kim and North Korea? We can’t do that.”