New Hampshire

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Haley Questions Trump’s Mental Fitness After He Mistakes Her for Pelosi

      by

      Nikki Haley on Saturday escalated her attacks on Donald J. Trump, directly criticizing his mental acuity for the first time a day after the former president appeared to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, during his Friday night rally in New Hampshire.In a news conference with reporters after her campaign event in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley stopped short of calling Mr. Trump mentally unfit. But she did question whether he would be “on it” enough to lead the nation.“My parents are up in age, and I love them dearly,” she said. “But when you see them hit a certain age, there is a decline. That’s a fact — ask any doctor, there is a decline.”At his rally, the former president accused Ms. Haley of failing to provide proper security during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and connected her to the House committee that later investigated it. Ms. Haley, who was not holding a government role at the time of the attack, had been at home in South Carolina that day, according to campaign officials.The former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley, 52, opened her presidential bid this year with calls for “new generational leadership” and mental competency tests for candidates who are 75 or older. Though she has continued to emphasize those calls throughout her candidacy, she has reserved her most pointed attacks about mental fitness for President Biden and Congress, which she calls “the most privileged nursing home in the country.”The last time she came this close to knocking Mr. Trump directly was in October, after he criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and referred to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart.” Responding to those remarks, Ms. Haley said: “To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president.”Since her election night speech after the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley has been sharpening her case against the former president, lumping Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden as backward-looking and barriers to an American revival. At her event in Keene, N.H., she criticized Mr. Trump on his leadership tone and asked the audience if they really wanted two “fellas” in their 80s competing for the presidency.“I wasn’t even in D.C. on Jan. 6 — I wasn’t in office then,” she told the audience on Friday.In a subsequent news conference, she suggested that the country was in too vulnerable of a state to have a leader who is mentally unfit.“It’s a concern, and it’s what Americans should be thinking about,” she said. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      To Undercut Haley, Trump Will Surround Himself With SC Leaders

      by

      Pressing his advantage over Nikki Haley in the homestretch before the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump will surround himself with South Carolina leaders, including Ms. Haley’s successor as governor, at a rally Saturday night to portray her as politically friendless at home, two Trump campaign officials said.The former president plans the show of strength to add to his own momentum before Tuesday’s voting and to highlight Ms. Haley’s lack of support in her home state, the officials said, insisting on anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, who endorsed Mr. Trump in November 2022, shortly after he announced his third presidential bid, will speak to voters in Manchester, N.H. He will be joined by the state’s lieutenant governor, Pamela Evette; Alan Wilson, the attorney general; Curtis Loftis, the treasurer; Murrell Smith, the speaker of the Statehouse; and three congressmen from the state, Joe Wilson, William Timmons and Russell Fry.One campaign adviser said the traveling slate of South Carolinians was meant to help Mr. Trump make the case that he has presented since his landslide victory in Iowa: that overtaking him is so unlikely that his rivals should suspend their campaigns so he and the Republican Party can focus on defeating President Biden in November.The guest appearances could humiliate Ms. Haley and further undermine her case for the nomination by illustrating how isolated she appears to be in her own state, where the Republican primary will be held on Feb. 24. And the South Carolina group backing Mr. Trump on Saturday will follow the state’s junior senator, Tim Scott, who endorsed Mr. Trump in Concord, N.H., on Friday.Ms. Haley is not without support in South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017, when Mr. Trump appointed her as ambassador to the United Nations. She has the backing of Representative Ralph Norman and Katon Dawson, a former state Republican chairman, along with a small number of South Carolina legislators.When asked at a campaign stop in Peterborough, N.H., about Mr. McMaster’s campaigning with Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley fired back: “I’m sorry, is that the person I ran against for governor and beat? Just check it.” Ms. Haley defeated Mr. McMaster in a 2010 primary, and he then promptly endorsed her.She also suggested that her inability to win high-profile supporters both in her home state and in Washington came from her willingness to pressure state lawmakers and veto their pet projects when she was governor, along with her criticism of Congress on the campaign trail.“If Donald Trump wants all his politicians, and they all want to go to him, they can have at it,” Ms. Haley said. “But that’s everything I’m fighting against.”Ms. Haley’s path to the nomination likely hangs on a victory or a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, where independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate. Though Mr. Trump maintains a large lead in the polls, Ms. Haley has narrowed that lead recently, effectively making the primary a two-person race in the state.But Ms. Haley would need to follow a strong performance in New Hampshire with another one in South Carolina, where Mr. Trump enjoys a large and loyal following. He leads in South Carolina polls by a wide margin and can also count on support there from Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally.Campaigning on Saturday in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was asked about South Carolina elected officials’ endorsing Mr. Trump. “Iowa Republican leadership lined up behind me, and we came in second,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters. “So I think there’s a limit to what the leadership can do.”The Trump campaign is eager to force both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis from the race before the South Carolina primary, hoping to avert what could otherwise be an expensive fight for delegates lasting through March.As the New Hampshire primary nears, Mr. Trump has increasingly escalated and sharpened his attacks on Ms. Haley. He now often argues that while she did an adequate job in his administration, she does not have what it takes to lead on her own.“She is not presidential timber,” Mr. Trump said bluntly in Concord on Friday.Mr. Trump has also repeatedly tried to backpedal on his past praise of Ms. Haley, claiming frequently that he appointed her ambassador to the United Nations only to clear the way for Mr. McMaster to become governor.Jazmine Ulloa More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Mocking Haley, Trump Adds to His Long History of Racist Attacks

      by

      Donald J. Trump first established his connection with the largely white Republican base more than a decade ago by stoking discomfort with the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president — the beginning of the so-called birther movement.In the years since, he has continued to pile up accusations of racism on the campaign trail. This week, Mr. Trump lobbed his latest racially charged attack at former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants and his closest competitor in the New Hampshire primary, by repeatedly flubbing her given name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.On Friday, Mr. Trump referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, three days after facing criticism for dubbing her “Nimrada.” Ms. Haley has long gone by her middle name, Nikki.Both are racist dog whistles, much like his continued focus on Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein, and add to a long history of racially incendiary statements from the campaign trail.Ms. Haley told reporters on Friday that Mr. Trump’s attacks revealed his own insecurities about the presidential contest.“If he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s going and spending millions of dollars on TV, he’s insecure — he knows that something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means.”At a rally for Ms. Haley in Manchester on Friday, supporters said they were glad the former governor was countering Mr. Trump’s accusations.“This is a continuation of the bullying and the third-grade behavior that should have him grounded,” said Kathy Holland, 75, a retired business owner. “We deserve leaders who act grown up.”Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that those raising concerns about Mr. Trump’s handling of race were themselves guilty of “faux outrage racism.”“They should get a life and live in the real world,” Mr. Cheung said.Mr. Trump’s history with the subject dates back years before his formal entry into politics.In February 2011, Mr. Trump started pushing the racist lie that Mr. Obama was not a U.S. citizen when he was testing the waters of a potential presidential campaign. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, discussed the so-called birther issue on almost a nightly basis that April, until Mr. Obama showed reporters his birth certificate later that month.By then, a CNN poll showed Mr. Trump tied for first in a hypothetical primary. While Mr. Trump opted to return for another season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” as the reality television show’s host instead of running for president, he ran in 2016 on similar themes.That year, he questioned the citizenship of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the first Latino senator from the state, who was born in Canada. Mr. Cruz’s mother is American, which automatically conferred citizenship.During his failed 2020 re-election bid, he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris, who would become the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president, did not meet the country’s citizenship requirements.This month, he returned to that familiar playbook by accusing Ms. Haley on social media of not being a real American eligible for the presidency — even as he was defending his own legal eligibility for the ballot under the Constitution.“I’ll let the president’s social media post speak for itself,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said last week at an event hosted by Bloomberg News.After the New Hampshire contest on Tuesday, attention in the Republican primary will turn mostly to South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s home state, which has its own history of racially charged politics.In February 2000, after Senator John McCain won a come-from-behind victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, he was the target of a smear campaign in South Carolina. The attacks falsely claimed that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, whom they adopted from Bangladesh, was the product of an illicit union.“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president,” some voters were asked in phone calls, “if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate Black child?”Michael Gold contributed reporting. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Haley’s Policy Pitch Recalls a Bygone Era Before Trump’s Rise

      by

      Nikki Haley’s calls for muscular international engagement and cuts to future Social Security benefits have elicited withering attacks from Donald J. Trump. They used to be Republican orthodoxy.Nikki Haley is appealing to voters with policies that recall an era when the Republican Party stood for a fiscal conscience and foreign policy leadership, at a time when the most sacred of federal programs and the international alliances that built the post-World War II era are under enormous strain.But the voice of contemporary Republican politics, Donald J. Trump, has been there to attack those appeals virtually ever day. On Tuesday, the voters of New Hampshire may decide whether the party can find a path back from Mr. Trump’s big government domestic policy and his isolationism abroad.Ms. Haley’s proposals to raise the retirement age for young workers and trim benefits for the wealthy while protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for those at or near retirement age may sound familiar to any but the youngest voters. They’re the essentially same plans put forward by Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul D. Ryan in the losing presidential campaign of 2012, and are of a piece with then-President George W. Bush’s failed efforts to transform Social Security from a federally guaranteed pension system to something more akin to a private 401(k) plan.Mr. Romney’s 2012 proposals were taken from the bipartisan commission assembled to address the budget deficit during Barack Obama’s presidency. The recommendations went nowhere.Ms. Haley’s calls to stand by NATO and support Ukraine echo the foreign policies of every president since the Second World War, but particularly the Republicans, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.But Mr. Trump has been relentless in his attacks on all those policies. His suggestions that he could withdraw the United States from NATO prompted President Biden last month to sign legislation barring the president from unilaterally dropping the North Atlantic alliance.At a rally in Concord, N.H., Friday night, he portrayed Ms. Haley as someone who “wants to wipe out your Social Security,” raise the retirement age to 75, “and then you’re dead.”A Trump radio ad placed in New Hampshire on Friday said Ms. Haley’s “devious plan” would “shockingly change the rules” on federal programs for older Americans by raising the retirement age. And a television ad, titled “Threat From Within” and placed the day before, featured retirees looking stricken as they hear that “Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82 percent of Americans,” before being reassured, “Trump will never let that happen.”The ads’ claims are false. The 82 percent figure stems from the total number of Americans eligible for Social Security, and Ms. Haley has said repeatedly that she would change nothing for current recipients or those close to eligibility.Republicans are used to coming under fire for the types of ideas that Ms. Haley is pushing. But this time, the fire is coming from the party’s de facto leader.“Whenever you discuss Social Security in a rational way, you’ve immediately gotten skewered, usually by the left,” said Judd Gregg, a retired Republican senator from New Hampshire who made long-term deficit reduction his main cause in Congress. “But in this case it’s by Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, portraying an end to aid for Ukraine and domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, couching ending aid to Ukraine and other domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn truth, their target for cuts mathematically could never put a dent in the federal deficit, which is expected to swell to nearly $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30, up from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2023.About 85 percent of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, other entitlement programs like veterans benefits, the military and interest on the national debt — none of which are on Mr. Trump’s target list. That leaves just 15 percent of total spending, for education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and other scientific research, energy, national parks, and foreign assistance.And with interest rates at their current high levels, even liberal economists worry that if Washington doesn’t start addressing the red ink, the rising cost of paying the government’s debts will crowd out other programs, stifle private investment and hurt the nation’s long-term future. Already, interest payments reached $659 billion last year, the fourth largest item in the federal budget.“In 10 years, the government will be spending more on interest on the national debt than on defense,” warned Thomas Kahn, who was the Democrats’ staff director on the House Budget Committee for 20 years. “The reality is the national debt is out of control, and both parties will need to make politically painful decisions.”Ms. Haley has not broached the ultimate painful decision for Republicans, raising taxes, but she has hit Mr. Trump repeatedly for adding $8 trillion to the federal debt while in office, after promising in the 2016 campaign that he would not only balance the budget but would pay off the debt, which surpassed $34 trillion over the holiday season.Those attacks appear to have delivered only glancing blows to Mr. Trump’s dominance. The former president won the Iowa caucuses on Monday in a landslide, with Ms. Haley a distant third. Polls point to a narrower Trump victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, then a steep uphill climb for Ms. Haley ahead of the South Carolina primary next month in her home state.But like a modern-day Cassandra, Ms. Haley has not flinched from her warnings that the nation must act now to curtail spending rationally in the largest government programs, Social Security and Medicare, or face more painful, chaotic cuts in the future.“I have seen the commercials you’ve seen,” she told voters on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H. “I will always tell you the truth.”The truth is not pretty. The trustees of Social Security say if nothing is done, the main Social Security program, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, will deplete its reserves in 2033, which could be the end of a Haley second term. At that point, Social Security would have to rely only on the money coming in from taxes each year. Promised benefits would have to be cut by 23 percent, not for future retirees that Ms. Haley wants to target but for those already drawing benefits.“The only person who wants to cut Social Security is Trump,” said Nachama Soloveichik, the Haley campaign communications director. “Trump’s refusal to save Social Security means 100 percent of Americans will face a 23 percent cut in Social Security benefits in less than 10 years.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, dismissed such criticism as still more evidence of Mr. Trump’s righteousness.“Nikki Haley is spiraling out of control and is now resorting to outright lies because she knows her position of increasing the age for Social Security and slashing retirements is an untenable position,” he said. “She should look deep down inside and really address why she wants to throw hard-working Americans off a financial cliff.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Comes Down to New Hampshire

      by

      The old guard of the Republican Party has rallied around Nikki Haley ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, in a long-shot bid to stop the former president’s march to the nomination.The first-in-the-nation primary could be the last stand for the anti-Trump Republican.Since 2016, a shrinking band of Republican strategists, retired lawmakers and donors has tried to oust Donald J. Trump from his commanding position in the party. And again and again, through one Capitol riot, two impeachments, three presidential elections and four criminal indictments, they have failed to gain traction with its voters.Now, after years of legal, cultural and political crises that upended American norms and expectations, what could be the final battle of the anti-Trump Republicans won’t be waged in Congress or the courts, but in the packed ski lodges and snowy town halls of a state of 1.4 million residents.Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, the old guard of the G.O.P. has rallied around Nikki Haley, viewing her bid as its last, best chance to finally pry the former president from atop its party. Anything but a very close finish for her in the state, where moderate, independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, would send Mr. Trump on an all-but-unstoppable march to the nomination. The Trump opposition is outnumbered and underemployed. The former president’s polarizing style and hard-nosed tactics have pushed many Republicans who oppose him into early retirement and humiliating defeats, or out of the party completely. Yet, their long-running war against him has helped to frame the nominating contest around a central, and deeply tribal, litmus test: loyalty to Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley bets on frosty New Hampshire to warm up to her candidacy

      by

      There is rest for neither the wicked nor the warm undergarments among Republican presidential candidates this week, as the Republican primary rolls from a bone-bustingly cold Iowa to an almost-as-frigid New Hampshire.In Manchester, the state’s largest city, the temperature dropped to 10F (-12C) in the days before Tuesday’s primary election, cold enough for icicles to cling to cars, rooftops and, in a park near the center of town, a roundabout.But despite the snow piled high by the sides of roads, and the near constant need for a woolly hat, the remaining Republicans are set to spend the next few days making a last-minute pitch to voters.After a disappointing time in Iowa, where she placed third in the state’s caucuses, Nikki Haley is hoping the Granite state can hand her a boost, as she seeks to prevent what is threatening to become a Donald Trump march to the Republican nomination, and there are some signs that the former governor of South Carolina might just be in luck.In a state that takes an unusually aggressive pride in its independence – “Live free or die”, New Hampshire’s state motto, is the kind of thing a guy might scream before ripping off his shirt and initiating a bar fight – Republican voters at least appear to be considering someone other than their party’s de facto leader.Polls show Haley winning almost 34% of the vote in the state, 13 points behind Trump but riding a surge despite a disappointing performance in Iowa. Haley’s pitch of calm instead of the “chaos” of Trump, and her positioning of herself as a relative centrist, could prove appealing in New Hampshire.“The Iowa Republican party is dominated by conservative evangelical Christians, whose first, second and third concerns are cultural relations – they care about LGBTQ+ issues, they care about abortion, all that sort of stuff,” said Christopher Galdieri, a professor in the department of politics at Saint Anselm College.“Republicans here, there is a constituency for those sorts of issues, but a lot of Republicans here, particularly in what passes for the party’s establishment these days, their main concern is fiscal conservatism, low taxes, low regulation.”Haley, who in the American media’s telling has become the main threat to Trump, was scheduled to hold a slew of events in the coming days, including intimate gatherings in New Hampshire’s smaller towns, such as Keene and Exeter. But in Manchester, where looming red-brick buildings serve as a nod to its UK namesake, it is Trump who seems to have the largest presence, with signs heralding the former president prominent and his campaign headquarters a hub of activity.The former president traveled to New Hampshire on Friday after spending much of Thursday in court in New York, where a judge is deciding what damages he must pay to E Jean Carroll, who a jury found was sexually assaulted by Trump in 1995. The case appears to have distracted him, at least in the short term, from his efforts to win the presidency: Trump spent Thursday night posting more than 30 times on Truth Social, the rightwing social media network he formed after being banned from Twitter (now X) in 2020.Still, as the vote approaches, Trump is following a similar plan as the one he used in Iowa, swooping in to New Hampshire to hold bombastic rallies in venues his rivals could only dream of filling. The one-term former president was due to hold four rallies over the four days before the primary, including one at the 10,000-seat SNHU arena in Manchester.Trump addressed thousands of supporters at the same venue the night before the 2016 primary, memorably calling Ted Cruz, then one of his main rivals, a “pussy”. Trump had narrowly lost to Cruz in Iowa, but swept to victory in New Hampshire with a commanding 20-point victory that lit a fire under Trump’s campaign and propelled him to the Republican nomination.There are signs that things may be closer on Tuesday.In recent days Trump has complained about independent voters, who under state rules are able to vote in the Republican primary, potentially backing Haley, and has launched racist dog-whistle attacks against his opponent. He referred to Haley, whose parents emigrated to the US from India, as Nimrada, a butchering of her legal first name, Nimarata. Haley has gone by Nikki, her middle name, since she was born, a spokesperson said in 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor her part, Haley is running a new ad in the state which links Trump with Joe Biden, claiming “both are consumed by chaos, negativity and grievances of the past”, and her relative calm seems to have some appeal.“I like her policies. I like what she did in South Carolina. I think she’s got good international experience, obviously, as a former UN ambassador,” said Jeanne Geisser at an event at a fancy hotel in Salem, a 20-minute drive from Manchester. She voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but said she would cast her ballot for Haley this time.“With Trump, all these lawsuits that are going on, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with those. And just his demeanor, his belittling of people. I don’t see that as presidential,” Geisser said.One person mostly absent from New Hampshire is Ron DeSantis, the cowboy boot-wearing Florida governor who came second to Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Though he beat Haley there, DeSantis is averaging 5% in New Hampshire polls, and though he held some events in the state on Friday, he has largely switched focus to South Carolina.While the focus is on the Republican primary, there are Democratic hopefuls active in New Hampshire too; Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, a self-help guru, are engaged in a largely futile battle to replace Joe Biden as the presidential nominee.Both Phillips and Williamson have both spent weeks criss-crossing the state, but New Hampshire will effectively have no say in the Democratic primary, after an internal party feud. The national Democratic party ditched decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway, the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the results.That means most eyes will be concentrated on the Republican side of things next week, where Haley’s wealthy backers are demanding a good result.Ken Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder and a key Haley donor, told the Financial Times on Thursday that he was prepared to spend “a nice sum of money” to support his candidate – but only if she does well in the Granite state.“If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rathole,” Langone said. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Confuses Haley and Pelosi, Accusing Rival of Jan. 6 Lapse

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday appeared to confuse Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi during a speech in New Hampshire, accusing Ms. Haley of failing to provide adequate security during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol and connecting her to the House committee that investigated it.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a former ambassador to the United Nations, has never served in Congress and was working in the private sector during the Capitol riot.On Friday night, Mr. Trump was in the middle of mocking Ms. Haley for the size of the crowds at her events, and criticizing the news media, when he pivoted to how he gave a speech in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol attack.“You know, when she comes here she gets like nine people, and the press never reports the crowds,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Haley, whose crowds have lately been, at the very least, in double digits.Then, he changed subjects. “You know, by the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6,” he said. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley.”Mr. Trump then repeated his frequent claim that the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack — including Mr. Trump’s actions that day — “destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence.”Then, he claimed that Ms. Haley was in charge of security that day, and that she and others had turned down his offer to send troops to the Capitol.“Nikki Haley was in charge of security,” he said. (She was not.) “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”Mr. Trump, 77, often attacks President Biden, 81, over his age and suggests that Mr. Biden is mentally unfit for office. “He can’t put two sentences together,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Trump has frequently tried to lay blame for the Jan. 6 riot with Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Trump ever offered to have troops deployed to the Capitol, or that Ms. Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, rejected him.At 3:52 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Ms. Haley reposted photos of besieged officials inside the Capitol, writing on Twitter, “An embarrassment in the eyes of the world and total sadness for our country. Wake up America.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Disdaining Haley, Trump Says She ‘Probably’ Won’t Be His Running Mate

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump intensified his attacks against Nikki Haley on Friday, saying that she was not of presidential caliber and that, as a result, he was unlikely to choose her as his running mate.“She is not presidential timber,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in Concord, N.H. “Now, when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”Mr. Trump, known for off-the-cuff pronouncements that veer from his prepared remarks, continued by making it clear that his dismissal of Ms. Haley was not a fluke: “When you say certain things, it sort of takes them out of play, right?”Mr. Trump is well known for excoriating someone in one breath, and then reversing himself when it becomes politically or otherwise advantageous to do so. But his stance toward Ms. Haley, whom he appointed as his ambassador to the United Nations, has hardened as the New Hampshire primary approaches.Though Mr. Trump holds a wide lead over Ms. Haley in polls, she has narrowed the gap here in recent months. The Trump campaign is eyeing a decisive win in New Hampshire that could severely curtail her chances at winning the Republican nomination.On Friday, he again accused her of being supported primarily by Democrats, saying that “leftists” were spending millions on advertisements so they could “flood your airwaves with Nikki propaganda.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More