Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is reiterating her calls for President Biden to take a mental competency test, in the wake of a special counsel report that described the 81-year-old president's memory as 'hazy,' 'fuzzy,' and 'poor'
Haley, the last remaining major rival to former President Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, said in a statement Thursday that, 'Joe Biden should take a mental competency test immediately, and it should be shared with the public.'
The former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, put out her statement after Special Counsel Robert Hur announced he wouldn't prosecute Biden, despite finding that the president 'willfully' retained classified information, posing 'serious risks to national security.'
But Hur's report was loaded with potentially more damaging material, as it noted that Biden couldn't recall major milestones in his own life.
'He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),' the report stated. 'He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.'
Republicans for a couple of years have repeatedly questioned Biden's mental competency, with those political attacks increasing since the president launched his re-election campaign for a second four-year term in the White House.
'Joe Biden can’t remember major events in his life, like when he was vice president or when his son died,' Haley emphasized in her statement. 'That is sad, but it will be even sadder if we have a person in the White House who is not mentally up to the most important job in the world.'
An angry and defiant Biden, taking questions from reporters at the White House, declared that 'I did not share classified information' and said 'my memory's fine.'
And pointing to the Hur report's comment that the president had trouble remembering his son Beau's death, Biden fired back, saying 'how in the hell dare he raise that.'
As she launched her presidential campaign a year ago, Haley called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years of age.
Such tests would include both Biden and the 77-year-old Trump. And Haley and her campaign in recent weeks have spotlighted a number of verbal gaffes made by the former president.
