Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) argued this week that former President Donald Trump was going through a mental decline. The 78-year-old former president confused Haley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), stating that Haley was partially responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protests.
Haley made the comments during a weekend interview with CBS News. She told host Margaret Brennan that Trump’s comments regarding Jan. 6 were incorrect.
“He says that I’m the one that kept security” from the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, she said. “I was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6. But Margaret, you don’t be surprised if you have someone that’s 80 in office, their mental stability is going to continue to decline.”
She said that a decline in mental acuity due to age was “just human nature.” She added that Trump would be even older while in the White House. She also said she didn’t know whether the former president was “confused. I don’t know what happened.”
However, she said that it should be a “warning sign.”
“Are we really going to go into a situation where we have wars around the world, and we’re trying to prevent war, and we’re going to have someone who we can or can’t be sure that they’re going to get confused?” she said. “It’s a real issue. That’s not being disrespectful. It’s just a fact.
Nikki Haley questions Trump's mental fitness after he appears to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi https://t.co/R49MxIHuoF
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 21, 2024
Haley also said that the former president was “insecure” after Trump referred to her by her birth name of Nimrata.
The former South Carolina governor’s comments also came after serious speculation about the mental health of President Joe Biden. While Trump and Biden are nearly the same age, polling has consistently shown that the public is far more concerned about Biden’s health and age over Trump’s.
A poll taken last year showed that a large majority of Americans are concerned about Biden’s age, with 77% saying that he was “too old” for the White House. When asked if Biden was “mentally sharp enough” to serve, only 39% agreed.
Meanwhile, the same Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that far fewer Americans were concerned about Trump’s age and that a majority said he was mentally sharp enough to run the country.
