Trump confuses Haley and Pelosi, accusing rival of Jan. 6 lapse
Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday appeared to confuse Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi during a speech in New Hampshire, accusing Ms. Haley of failing to provide adequate security during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and linking her to the House committee that investigated it.
Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, never served in Congress and worked in the private sector during the Capitol riot.
On Friday night, Mr. Trump was mocking Ms. Haley for the size of crowds at her events and criticizing the news media when he took aim at the manner in which he delivered a speech in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. that preceded the attack on the Capitol.
“You know, when she comes here, she gets about nine people, and the press never reports on the crowds,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Haley, whose attendance numbers have been at least in the double digits lately.
Then he changed the subject. “By the way, you know, they never report the crowd on January 6,” he said. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley.”
Mr. Trump then repeated his frequent claim that the bipartisan House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack — including Mr. Trump's actions that day — had “destroyed all information and all evidence.”
He then claimed that Ms. Haley was in charge of security that day, and that she and others had rejected his offer to send troops to the Capitol.
“Nikki Haley was in charge of security,” he said. (She wasn't.) “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guardsmen, whatever they wanted. They rejected it. They don't want to talk about that.”
Mr. Trump, 77, often attacks President Biden, 81, because of his age and suggests that Mr. Biden is mentally unfit for office. “He can't put two sentences together,” Trump said on Friday. 'I can't put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to pin the blame for the Jan. 6 riot on Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. There is no evidence, however, that Mr. Trump ever offered to send troops to the Capitol, or that Mrs. Pelosi, then the speaker of the House of Representatives, turned him down.
On January 6, 2021 at 3:52 p.m., Ms. Haley reposted photos of besieged officials in the Capitol, to write on Twitter: “A disgrace in the eyes of the world and total sadness for our country. Wake up America.”