Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) said Sunday on a CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “there have been multiple things” showing former President Donald Trump’s mental stability was declining.
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Former President Trump on Friday, repeatedly and wrongly said that you were in charge of the January 6 security response at the Capitol, and he said your name four times. I want to play this for our viewers.
DONALD TRUMP: They never report the crowd on January 6, you know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley. You know, they- did you know, they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it. Because of lots of things like Nikki Haley, is in charge of security.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s unclear what he’s talking about as being deleted. But you said yesterday, hearing this made you question Donald Trump’s mental fitness. Is that the first time you questioned his mental fitness?
NIKKI HALEY: If you look, recently, there have been multiple things. I mean, he’s claimed that Joe Biden was going to get us into World War II. I’m assuming he met World War three. He said that he ran against President Obama. He never ran against President Obama. He says that I’m the one that kept security from Jan- from the Capitol on January 6. 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. That’s just human nature. We know that. What I’m saying is, first of all, you’re talking about somebody who’s only going to be in office four years. Secondly, you’re talking about someone who continues to- I mean, look, I don’t know if he was confused. I don’t know what happened. But it should be enough to send us a warning sign that if you look, Joe Biden, he’s very different than he was two years ago. 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? It’s a real issue. That’s not being disrespectful. It’s just a fact.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why do you think Trump’s voters care about that? And when you worked in his Cabinet, did you ever question his mental fitness?
NIKKI HALEY: When I worked in his Cabinet, I called him out if he was doing something wrong, I mean, I would show up, I pick up the phone and say “you can’t do this. Instead, you could do X, Y, or Z,” you know, so I always told him what I thought was in the best interest of the country when I was in his Cabinet. But this is different. I mean, we’re seeing he’s just not at the same level he was at 2016. I think we’re seeing some of that decline. But more than that, what I’ll say is, focus on the fact that no matter what it is, chaos follows him. Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him–
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Does he cause it?
NIKKI HALEY: — and America’s tired. In some cases, he causes it. In some cases, he doesn’t. But regardless, he’s like a magnet to it. And so what happens is that puts the rest of America in chaos, and people are tired, and they’re worried. I mean, kids right now in their 20s, they don’t know if they’re ever going to be able to afford a home. They don’t know how this debt is gonna get paid down. They don’t know if they’re gonna find a job. You see people living- 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. People talk about the economy that Donald Trump had us in, it was good, but he put us $8 trillion in debt in just four years. That’s not what you do.
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