Johnson admitted during his interview on “The View” that he had genuinely forgotten about the city of Aleppo.
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A boy carries his belongings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo’s al-Fardous district, Syria on April 2, 2015.
Outside of the contempt many people had for Trump and Clinton, Johnson would have Weld, a former MA governor, at his side.
“Well, you could look on a map and find Aleppo”, she said.
During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” panelist Mike Barnicle asked Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico: “What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?”.
When Johnson was asked what he would do about the situation in Aleppo there was confusion. Listening to his answer once it dawned on him that this was a question about the Syrian refugee crisis it was obvious he was not clueless on the issue since he knew the players who were involved. When reminded by MSNBC on Thursday, Mr. Johnson said he’d work with Russian Federation to find a diplomatic solution to the civil war and that the conflict was an example of the dangers of meddling in the region. Johnson is closer with 9 percent of support.
As FAIR contributor Ben Norton noted in a piece for Salon (9/8/16), the Times’Alan Rappeport (9/8/16) wrote a piece about Johnson’s gaffe that described Aleppo as “the de facto capital of the Islamic State”, or ISIS.
The hashtag #WhatIsAleppo began trending on Twitter soon after Johnson’s comment, as people weighed in with sarcasm and disbelief.
Barnicle said he was “stunned”.
Johnson released a mea culpa later in the day in the form of a statement, admitting, “I blanked”.
“I didn’t think it was that bad”, he said.
“OK. Got it. With regard to Syria, I do think it is a mess”, the Libertarian nominee said. “Aleppo is in Syria”.
What does it say about our national apathy if a presidential candidate and a world-renowned newspaper can’t even identify where or what Aleppo is? “Yes, I understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict-I talk about them every day”.
Johnson, you know by now, didn’t know what Aleppo was – or at least he couldn’t place its relevance in the conversation. Now The New York Times is vying to join him for some errant posts and tweets.
During a television interview Thursday, Johnson asked what Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, is.
Gary Johnson is confused about the civil war in Syria. He needs to average 15 percent in a set of polls to qualify for the presidential debates, the first of which is September 26.
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Therein, the magazine highlighted one embarrassing blunder the candidate has made – one that again raises questions about Johnson’s readiness to take the Oval Office…
