Trump attacks ‘mumbling’ Nancy Pelosi as crowd chants ‘lock her up’

President tweets he wants to ‘shake up the Dems a little bit’

Donald Trump has launched a mean-spirited attack on Nancy Pelosi, accusing his Democratic critic of mumbling as he delivered a speech, as his supporters chanted “lock her up”.

At a rally in New Hampshire on the eve of the Democratic primary, an event that mirrored one he held last week in Iowa, Mr Trump claimed the House speaker had been mumbling behind him when he sought to deliver his state of the union speech.

“I had somebody behind me who was mumbling terribly,” said the president, as the crowd started to chant “lock her up”, a phrase they once reserved for Hillary Clinton.

The president continued “I’m speaking, and a woman is mumbling terribly behind me. Angry. We’re the ones who should be angry, not them.”

He then claimed the 79-year-old Democrat, who made headlines when she deliberately tore up her copy of the president’s speech moments after her concluded his address to both houses of Congress, was responsible for giving Republicans their highest poll numbers yet.

“Nine months from now, we are going to retake the House of Representatives, we are going to hold the Senate, and we are going to keep the White House,” he said. “We have so much more enthusiasm, it’s not even close. They’re all fighting each other. They don’t know what they’re doing. They can’t even count their votes.”

Before setting off for New Hampshire, where he invited his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr to the stage, the president had tweeted that he wished to “shake up the Dems a little bit – they have a really boring deal going on”.

As it is, Democrats have plenty of drama of their own. Two new polls published on Monday suggested support for former vice president Joe Biden was at a new low nationally, and that Bernie Sanders was now the frontrunner.

Mr Trump sought to denounce all the candidates saying none of them were any good, and that the Vermont senator was “crazy”.

At his own rally in Manchester, Mr Biden vowed that the president’s attempt to steal the momentum would not distract Democrats.

“Guess who else is in Manchester tonight?” Mr Biden said, as the crowd reportedly booed. “What a coincidence!”

He added: “I don’t care how many times he comes to New Hampshire, he’s not going to win New Hampshire in November.”

In 2016, while Mr Trump won the Republican primary in New Hampshire, easily pushing John Kasich and Ted Cruz into second and third place, he lost the state to Ms Clinton in the general election.

On Monday, he repeated a conspiracy theory that voters from Massachusetts had crossed the border to help secure her victory.

There is no evidence to support his claim, but the Democrats margin of victory was less than half-a-point, and New Hampshire remains on the top of the Republicans target list for 2020.

In some respects, his appearance was a victory lap after being his acquittal last week by the Senate on impeachment charges.

“Our good Republicans in the United States Senate voted to reject the outrageous partisan impeachment hoax and to issue a full, complete and absolute total acquittal,” he said.

“And it wasn’t even close.”

Additional reporting by agencies