Former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley went back and forth Saturday over Trump’s age and mental fitness after Trump appeared to confuse Haley for Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi in a campaign speech on Friday.
The verbal sparring kicked off when Trump accused Haley of being “in charge of security” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a claim he has frequently lobbed at Pelosi.
“They’re saying he got confused, that he was talking about something else, he’s talking about Nancy Pelosi,” Haley said Saturday in Keene, New Hampshire. “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 that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this.”
“My parents are up in age, and I love them dearly,” she added during a Saturday news conference following a campaign event. “But when you see them hit a certain age, there is a decline. That’s a fact — ask any doctor, there is a decline.”
Haley, who is 52, has peppered her campaign with calls for “new generational leadership,” and has advocated for requiring older candidates to pass “mental competency tests.” She has also claimed that the stumbles of older politicians make the U.S. “less safe,” a position she reiterated on Fox News Saturday. “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?” she said. “We can’t do that.”
As further evidence of Trump’s putative cognitive decline, Haley also mentioned past moments in which Trump has appeared to mix up President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama. “He got confused and said he was running against Obama — he never ran against Obama!” she said. “Don’t put our country at risk like this.”
Trump hit back at the comments during his Saturday evening rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. “They always say, like Haley, she talks about, ‘yeah, we don’t need 80-year-olds,” Trump said. “Well, I don’t mind being 80, but I am 77; that’s a big difference.”
He also defended his Obama routine, which he has described as a sarcastic joke. “A lot of times, I’ll say that President Obama is doing a lousy job, meaning that Obama is running the show,” he said. “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 … and I aced it. I also took one when I was in the White House.”
“I’ll let you know when I go bad. I really think I’ll be able to tell you,” Trump added. “I feel my mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago. Is that possible?”
In recent weeks, Trump has ratcheted up his criticism of Haley, whom he appointed as a United Nations ambassador in 2017. The former president’s Saturday rally seemed designed to irritate his rival, as he trotted out several endorsements from politicians from Haley’s home state of South Carolina, including the state’s current governor, Henry McMaster. “Almost every politician from the state of South Carolina is endorsing me,” Trump bragged.
This weekend’s squabble over age and mental infirmity marks the most direct clash between Trump and Haley, who, in the most recent Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe poll released Saturday, garnered 36 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote. Trump notched 53 percent. But the back-and-forth also underscores how age has become a significant campaign issue during this election season, with both parties’ frontrunners currently old enough that they’d finish a second term in their 80s.
Biden’s re-election campaign, which continues to be dogged by worries over Biden’s age, posted Haley’s comments on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday. The campaign wrote: “Haley reacts to Trump’s delusional and confused rant last night where he suggested that she was Speaker of the House on January 6: He got confused. I question if he’s mentally fit.”
Jack McCordick
Source link
