By Allan Smith—
NBC News
Nikki Haley
He questioned whether Donald Trump is mentally capable of serving as president.
after he mistook her for Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on Friday night.
Addressing supporters in Keene, New Hampshire, on Saturday, Haley criticized recent comments by Trump and also said
the presidential race should not be a showdown between two men in their late 80s and older
.
“We see that Biden has changed a lot in two years,” Haley said.
“But last night, Trump was at a rally and asked several times why I didn't handle security during the Capitol riot.
Why didn't I act better on January 6?
Because I wasn't even in DC that day."
“They said he got confused, that he was talking about something else, that he was talking about Nancy Pelosi,” Haley continued.
“The concern I have is — and I'm not saying anything derogatory — when it comes to the pressures of the presidency, we can't have another person make us question whether she's mentally fit to do the job.
We can not".
Trump's comments came Friday during a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where he repeatedly lashed out at Haley, calling her a "globalist fool," and
suggested he would not pick her for vice president
if he won the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaking about the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in his 90-plus minute speech, Trump stated, “Nikki Haley, do you know that they destroyed all the information, all the evidence, everything was erased and destroyed?”
“Nikki Haley was in charge of security,” he continued.
“We offered them 10,000 people, soldiers, the National Guard, whatever they wanted.
They rejected it.
They don't want to talk about it.
“They are very dishonest people.”
Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event in Iowa City, Iowa, on January 13. Ruth Fremson / NYT via Redux, file
The Haley and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
Haley has called for federal officials over the age of 75 to undergo a mental fitness test
, taking aim at both Biden and Trump.
Your comments from Saturday
They were probably the strongest so far
about Trump's ability to govern.
Trump has in the past accused Nancy Pelosi of rejecting the additional security his Administration offered to provide on January 6.
But the House committee tasked with investigating the assault on the Capitol found no evidence to support that claim and wrote in its final report that Trump's acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller "directly denied it when he testified under oath." .
Both Haley and Trump have focused on Biden's age, referring to him as mentally unfit to govern.
The president's campaign quickly promoted a clip of Haley's remarks from Saturday.
“I think last night (Trump) made a pretty obvious blunder,” Betsy Ankney, Haley's campaign manager, said in a Bloomberg News forum on Saturday.
“The bottom line is that she (Haley) has been making that argument for months.
In the speech she gave announcing her candidacy she said that we need mental fitness tests for politicians over 75, that we need a new generation of leaders.
And that is what we continue to focus on,” she stated.