During an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee on Thursday flubbed a question on the Syrian civil war, asking, “What is Aleppo?”.
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“And what is Aleppo?”.
In an interview after the event Johnson seemed even more tangled up in his own words, with predictably excruciating results.
Barnicle, in seeming disbelief, said: “You’re kidding”. “I do understand Aleppo, and I understand the crisis that is going on”, Johnson replied. “It is the epicenter of the refugee crisis”.
The embarrassing exchange followed a forum on Wednesday night in which Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump tried to showcase their national security and defense credentials.
Johnson has since said that he “blanked” and insists he’s familiar with the dynamics of Middle Eastern conflict and the city’s humanitarian crisis.
Candidates are required to reach 15 percent support in national polls to make it to the presidential debates, which commence later this month. “It worked”, Johnson said in a statement.
It may be worth noting here that Romney has said he wished Weld, a fellow former Bay State governor and friend, were at the top of the Libertarian ticket. When the interviewer explained that Aleppo was a city in war-torn Syria Johnson responded with “Okay, got it”. (OK, maybe not no one but lots and lots of people.) The first presidential debate was still nearly three weeks off. “But hit with ‘What about Aleppo?’, I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict”, Johnson wrote.
Johnson went on to say the United States should “join efforts with Russian Federation to end the conflict in Syria diplomatically” while adding that the conflict was the result of regime change gone badly. But, you know what, I’ve been really well served in my life by always telling the truth. Despite it being a city were the atrocities against humans come in many horrific forms, such as chemical warfare, they have not received help from the United States.
Here’s the thing: If you are a third party candidate, you might get one or, at most, two moments in the course of a campaign in which you move from the fringes of the coverage to the center of it.
Johnson paused and said: “And what is Aleppo?”.
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But, he said, “I succeeded by surrounding myself with the right people, getting to the bottom of important issues and making principled decisions”. No”, he continued. “Should I have identified Aleppo? Yes.
