Nancy Pelosi on Trump’s Name Confusion: 'Mixing up Seven Times Is Kind of a Lot'

Recently, at a rally, Donald Trump reiterated a theory that holds former Speaker Nancy Pelosi accountable for security lapses at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He wrongly leveled the charge on Nikki Haley, implying that she was the Speaker of the House on January 6, 2021, rather than going after Pelosi. Regarding the apparent confusion, Pelosi said in response to a question during election coverage of the New Hampshire primary in an interview with MSNBC, "Well, let me just say, I’m not going to spend too much time on Donald Trump’s cognitive disorders."

In a recent interview with CNN's Dana Bash, when Pelosi was asked about her previous comment on Trump's "cognitive disorders" she replied, "Anybody can get a name mixed up, 7 times is kind of a lot. But the fact is that he was lying about the fact that he would not send the National Guard through the Capitol when Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi were begging him to do it all day." Trump claimed rival GOP presidential candidate Haley was "in charge of security" during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol at a campaign address in Concord, New Hampshire, on Jan. 19, 2024. He mistook Republican Haley for Democratic Speaker of the House, Pelosi, based on remarks he has made on past occasions.

As reported by NBC News, he said, "Nikki Haley, did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it. Because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they wanted. They turned it down. They don't want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people." The next day, when Trump repeated the identical charges against Pelosi—not Haley—in a post on Truth Social, he subtly acknowledged his mistake: "Nancy Pelosi was responsible for Security - She should not have turned down the 10,000 soldiers offered by President Trump days before January 6. Also, the January 6th Unselect Committee of political Hack and Thugs should not have DELETED AND DESTROYED the Evidence and Findings of their Committee. What they did is illegal- A CRIME!!!"

Trump had claimed that Pelosi had turned down 10,000 troops on January 6. The now-defunct Jan. 6 committee's final report stated: "Some have suggested that President Trump gave an order to have 10,000 troops ready for January 6th. The Select Committee found no evidence of this. In fact, President Trump’s Acting Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller, directly refuted this when he testified under oath." Last week, during an MSNBC interview, Pelosi again defended herself, "He tried to say that Nikki Haley did not allow the National Guard to come, but it was Nancy Pelosi. It was nobody. It was Joe—it was Donald Trump." As per Fox News reports, she added, "He knows that we don’t have the authority to bring the national guard, the president does. Sad to say to the District of Columbia, because in every other state, the governor has that power. So, I’m more concerned about what he was trying to accuse her of, and again, his many misrepresentations. But don’t spend so much time on him. We don’t agonize about him."