Indian American leader and Republican leader Nikki Haley attacked former US President Donald Trump while raising concerns over his ‘mental fitness’ after the former President confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, The Hill reported.
In a video message of X, Haley said, “Last night, Trump is at a rally…and he’s going on and on, mentioning me multiple times as to why I didn’t take security during the Capitol riots, why I didn’t handle January 6 better. I wasn’t even in DC on January 6. I wasn’t in office then.”
“They’re saying he got confused, that he was talking about something else, he’s talking about Nancy Pelosi, he mentioned me multiple times in that scenario,” she added.
The former UN Ambassador said that someone at the position of the US President dealing with so much pressure has to be ‘mentally fit’ for the job.
“The concern I have is, I’m not saying anything derogatory, 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 this,” she further stated.
This comes after Trump appeared to make the gaffe about the former South Carolina Governor Haley and the former House Speaker Pelosi at a rally on Friday while talking about the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, according to The Hill.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it,” Trump said.
“Because of lots of things … like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people,” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump and Haley will go head to head on January 23 in the New Hampshire primary, the next stop in the battle for the GOP presidential nomination.
This comes after Trump registered a comprehensive victory at the Iowa caucuses this week winning 20 of the 40 delegates. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came a distant second with eight delegates and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley finishing not much behind with seven delegates.
According to a poll average from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill, Trump is currently 10.6 points ahead of Haley in the race in the Granite State.
Earlier on Friday, Haley hit back at Trump over his remarks questioning the former UN Ambassador’s eligibility to run as president.
“I know Trump well. He gets into name calling when he feels threatened and insecure. I’m not going to waste any energy on that,” she posted on X (formerly Twitter).
This came after Trump launched a new series of attacks on Haley on his social media platform Truth Social. Trump misspelt Haley’s first name, ‘Nimarata’ as ‘Nimrada’ and also questioned her eligibility to run for president due to her parents’ citizenship status at the time of her birth.