Sean Hannity on Monday attempted to justify Donald Trump repeatedly mixing up Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). (Check out the audio below.)
Hannity, the Fox News host who’s a regular Trump booster, chalked up the blunder to the former president being “so engulfed in busy-ness.”
“I have given five speeches in a day,” Hannity said on his radio show. “I have done it. I have been there. I’ve been to three cities in a day giving three separate speeches in three different cities. I’ve forgotten what city I’m in at any given time. I’ll say to somebody and walk out, ‘Where are we again?’ You don’t ― it sounds ridiculous, but you don’t remember because you are just so engulfed in busy-ness.”
Hannity continued, “The guy can talk for, you know, four hours straight and not miss a beat. But boy, oh, all of a sudden, all the people that ignored his cognitive decline the whole time. Now, all of a sudden, one error.”
This didn’t appear to be the product of mere “busy-ness”:
In a Friday speech at Concord, New Hampshire, ahead of Tuesday’s primary showdown against Haley, Trump tried to hold Pelosi accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack but instead blamed Haley, who had long departed her U.N. ambassadorship under Trump by then.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on Jan. 6,” Trump said. “You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley. You know they — do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it.”
Trump added, “Because of lots of things like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”
The House speaker does not run the Capitol’s security but that’s another matter.
The extended confusion on top of other recent mistakes “may revive age as an issue on the 2024 campaign trail, this time aimed at Trump himself,” HuffPost reported Monday.
However, one recent poll indicated that President Joe Biden, 81, elicits far more concern from voters over his mental acuity than his likely general election opponent, Trump, 77.
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