“What would you do about Aleppo?”.
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Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, when asked in an MSNBC interview (Morning Joe, 9/8/16) what he would do about the battle raging over the Syrian city of Aleppo, responded, “What is Aleppo?”.
The reporter then went onto explain that “Aleppo is in Syria…”
Former governor Bill Weld, running for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket, on Thursday shrugged off his running mate’s geopolitical flub earlier in the day, saying it could have happened to anyone and had been seized upon by “hystericists”.
Although he trails far behind Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in polls, both main party candidates are said to be unpopular among many United States voters and analysts believe Mr Johnson could play a part in deciding the result.
Really? Because you stumped him on a geography question at the butt crack of dawn?
“What would you do about Aleppo?”
“What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the Syrian city that is the de facto capital of the Islamic State. Many have criticized Barack Obama’s administration for doing too little, particularly after a failed promise that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government represented the ultimate “red line”, and would prompt intervention.
Johnson’s blunder sparked widespread mockery, with a #WhatisAleppo hashtag trending on Twitter.
“You do occasionally blank”, Weld said, according to the Globe.
Johnson released a statement shortly after, saying he “blanked” and that the mistake served to set “aside any doubt that I’m human”, while also protesting that he was was otherwise well-versed in the challenge the five-year war presented.
He added: “I have to get smarter, and that’s just part of the process”. Behar told him “I think it’s a disqualifying statement, frankly”. But hit with ‘What about Aleppo?’, I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict. “I think people understand that you can forget a detail”.
Mr Johnson seemed to recognise the peril of the Aleppo error.
To do that he needs the backing of 15% of voters, but a recent Washington Post-Survey Monkey poll found he only has 13%. The city has suffered massive destruction during the Syrian civil war and is the center of the Syrian humanitarian crisis. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, he said that he felt “horrible” about the question.
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“I know there are self-appointed hystericists mostly located in the NY blog community who think it’s really awful, but let’s wait and see”, he added.
