Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is growing bolder about calling out what she sees as former President Donald Trump's cognitive decline.
In a CBS Mornings segment flagged by reporter Scott MacFarlane, Haley, the final major candidate challenging Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, was asked by Nate Burleson whether she thinks Trump is losing his mental faculties, and clearly said she did. This comes after Trump raised eyebrows by repeatedly confusing Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and claiming she blocked National Guard assistance on January 6.
(Neither Haley nor Pelosi blocked National Guard assistance on January 6.)
"You've worked with him closely, you've known him for quite some time," said Burleson. "Do you truly believe he is suffering from cognitive decline?"
"Are we really, in this country, going to have two 80-year-olds running for president?" said Haley. "It is a fact that when you are their age, you have mental decline. I don't care who you are. You have mental decline. He didn't just get me confused, he mentioned it over and over and over again. He's not what he was in 2016. He has declined. That's a fact."
Haley has made the age of her opponents a constant theme on the campaign trail, even proposing that candidates for office over the age of 75 should be required to take a mental competency test.
Trump, for his part, has denied any cognitive decline, and has frequently touted how he "aced" the Montreal Cognitive Assessment by correctly identifying drawings of animals — even though passing this test doesn't definitively rule out dementia, and even though his description of the test doesn't line up with what experts say it includes.
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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