Nikki Haley -- and a great many Republicans -- aren't "competent" to hold office
Haley actually meant "cognitive" tests when she called for candidates over 75 to be screened. The purposeful misnomer was a bow to Trump. Media aren't correcting her.
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Nikki Haley is a lying, scheming, fraudulent manipulator, who said in February of 2016 that she wouldn’t be endorsing Donald Trump because he is “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president.” The former South Carolina governor said Trump was “everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten.”
“I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K,” she said. “That is not a part of our party. That is not who we are.”
Four months later Haley endorsed Trump — her children be damned — and four months after that she accepted his naming her to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations in his authoritarian, isolationist, immigrant-bashing administration.
No one like that who disavowed a racist misogynist only to pledge undying loyalty to him — from Marco Rubio to Lindsey Graham — is competent to be president of the United States. Competency is about trust, leadership, consistency and truth.
But all of these people have lied to the American people, and will lie again, showing they are dangerous because of who they will align themselves with for the sake of political expediency. That disqualifies them from serving as a leader of the most powerful country in the world.
I think we’d all agree George Santos isn’t competent to hold the office he holds in the House of Representatives either. Arguably, neither is Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert. They’re either fabricators, lack basic knowledge of how American government works, have no idea how to pass legislation by building coalitions, or all of the above.
Completely incompetent. But none of them is over 75.
So when Haley, who is 51, called for “competency tests” for all candidates over the age of 75— presidential candidates but also Congressional candidates — it was a misnomer. And it very much seems purposeful at that.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who is 81, slammed her idea as “absurd.” Trump, who is 76, just one-upped her and called for physical as well as mental tests for all candidates, perhaps thinking Haley, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence might have medical issue they don’t want known.
But no one has pointed to or speculated about Haley purposely using the wrong term.
While Haley of course was slamming President Biden as a octogenarian with her announcement, she was also hitting Trump — but not too hard. Age is the only thing she’s using to try to differentiate herself from Trump. She truly could not give several Fox News interviewers, multiple times, any differences she has on policy with Trump — but keeps coming back to the age issue.
And the test she’s really talking about is a cognitive test, which is what Trump famously says he took — and passed with flying colors — back in July of 2020, when his MAGA doctor, Ronny Jackson, performed it on him. According to Trump, he was able to easily repeat back, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” We all remember this — and the hilarity that ensued, as several experts said it wasn’t a true cognitive test.
When Haley was on Fox News last week calling for “competency” tests for people over 75, she was asked how Trump would do on it at 76-years-old. She replied that he “did great the last time he did it.”
That proves she meant cognitive test, as no one was calling it a competency test just two years ago.
From Politico:
From NBC:
The New York Times:
The Washington Post:
Every headline called it a cognitive test — and the stories pointed to the flaws of the test and how it really didn’t measure his cognition. That issue aside, it’s clear that Haley decided to use a less pointed word than cognitive, which is so transparent in its definition of mental acuity.
But competency is far different from cognition. Like it or not, George Santos would pass any cognitive test, and so would Marjorie Taylor Greene. But, as I noted, they are not competent in their jobs.
Oddly, none of the media who previously called Trump’s test a cognitive test is calling it that now, just buying Haley’s rebranding with a softer term. And this is allowing her to subtly shift the discussion — and to get off easily, without insulting Trump too much. Haley’s entire candidacy has so far been about not getting Trump angry — even still lauding his policies — while trying to hint at something better about her.
It also allows her to get around calling into question her actual competency — with everyone wink-winking and nudge-nudging that she really means cognitive — and why, for all the reasons I stated above, she is not competent to be president of the United States.
Joe Biden certainly was competent to be president in 2020, and has shown his competency over the last two years, passing enormous bills through Congress, uniting NATO against Russia, bringing down the deficit. The list goes on.
And Trump? Does anyone objectively — beyond the MAGA cult — believe he was competent? From “Infrastructure Week” which never actually happened, to the horrors of his response to COVID — do I need to even mention injecting bleach? — Trump was the most dangerous example of incompetency in the presidency we’ve seen.
So Haley can talk about competency all she wants. But we should measure her — and others — by that word, not by the word she’s dog-whistling at but doesn’t have the guts to say out loud.
I'm not a fan of IQ tests, given their long history of ethnic and racial bias. BUT!! I do think every public official (in Congress, White House, and JUDICIARY) should have a baseline at age 70, with a follow up every 2 years afterwards. It shouldn't just be for the chief executive, but EVERYONE in public service.
And Nikki Hayley is such a goon. She, like endless GOP SC governors before her, thinks she's presidential material. Alas, she was governor of a small state, with an ugly history, and love of Christian Nationalism. Nope, not gonna cut it.
Haley made an astonishing admission in a tweet that she is clueless about more than cognitive testing:
She said George Washington was President when the Continental Congress met 1787. Washington was elected president of that Congress by 55 white guys. He was not elected President of the United States until a new Constitution was written and his first election in 1789. In Haley's understanding apparently Strong Man Washington dictated the Constitution from soup to nuts.