PETERBOROUGH, N.H. — Nikki Haley on Saturday accused Republican front-runner Donald Trump of confusing her with Nancy Pelosi, claiming she had to scold her boss at the time while he was ambassador to the United Nations.
“When you're 80, you're not as smart as you were before,” Haley told a crowd of about 200 voters at the Monadnock Historical and Cultural Center in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
She mocked President Trump's gaffe Friday night in Concord, New Hampshire, when he referred to Haley instead of Pelosi about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“The man was ranting about how I blocked the Capitol Police from entering on January 6th. He went on and on,” Haley said.
“I was not in Washington, D.C., on January 6th. I had nothing to do with the Capitol.”
She also criticized President Trump's cozy relationship with foreign dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Did you know that when we were in power, I had to sit down with him and tell him to stop this bromance with President Putin?”
“It's dangerous, don't do that,” she said sternly.
“The world is on fire right now.”
President Trump has repeatedly defended his overtures to authoritarian leaders such as President Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, calling his soft-spoken approach to diplomacy “a good thing, not a bad thing.” he claimed.
But the hawkish Haley laid out a lengthy list of foreign policy grievances in multiple campaign appearances on Saturday, with two days left until Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
“What about the fact that President Trump praised China's President Xi over a dozen times after China gave us the coronavirus?” she asked.
“He said he would support China when they took Hong Kong's democracy away. He celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party,” Haley continued.
“Who would do that? Not the president of the United States!”
She also spoke of the suffering of Cindy Warmbier, whose son Otto, a college student, was arrested in North Korea in 2016 and released a year later with severe brain damage.
“Do you know how hard it was for her to hear the president say he was writing a love letter to the man who tortured her son?” Haley asked.
The former South Carolina governor is struggling to close a 16-point support gap with the former president following a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses this week.
