Donald Trump returned to New Hampshire on Monday evening, once again hellbent on flexing his ability to identify shapes and sounds. After bragging last week that he “aced” his cognitive test after correctly naming a giraffe, tiger, and whale, the former president spoke to a crowd of supporters in Laconia, New Hampshire — his last rally before the state’s Republican primary.
Amid a disjointed rant referencing the scrapped Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative that was popularly known as ”Star Wars,” Donald Trump began to describe his own supposed plans for a U.S. missile defense system.
“I will build an Iron Dome over our country, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield made in the USA,” Trump said, appearing to reference Israel’s air defense system. “We do it for other countries. We help other countries, we build, we don’t do it for ourselves.”
“You know these are not muscle guys here,” the ex-president added, accurately pointing to his arm. “They’re muscle guys up here,” he said, pointing to his brain, now two-for-two.
Then, in his attempt to explain the subtle complexities of his so-called defense plan, Trump declared: “And they calmly walk to us, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding… They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. Okay. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.”
Trump has previously floated the idea of manufacturing an Iron Dome in the U.S., a proposal that was mocked even by Fox News.
With Ron DeSantis dropping out of the GOP primary race and endorsing Trump on Sunday, Trump and Nikki Haley are gearing up for their first one-on-one matchup.
While the former president enters the race with a decisive win in the Iowa caucus, the former South Carolina governor challenged Trump’s mental fitness after he confused her name with Nancy Pelosi’s and repeated a baseless claim that he offered to send 10,000 troops on Jan. 6 — which has been fully debunked by the Jan. 6 committee.
“Don’t be surprised if you have someone that is 80 in office, their mental stability is going to continue to decline. That’s just human nature,” Haley said Sunday on Face the Nation. (Trump is 77 years old and will be 78 on inauguration day 2025). She continued, “I don’t know if he was confused, I don’t know what happened, but it’s enough to send us a warning sign.”
