Journalist Mike Barnicle, who asked the Libertarian White House contender what he would do about the Aleppo crisis if elected, replied with an incredulous “you’re kidding me”, to Johnson’s professed ignorance on the subject.
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Then, Aleppo was incorrectly identified as the capital of Syria, which is Damascus.
First, they called Aleppo the “de facto Islamic State capital” which it said was Raqqa. Today, numerous city’s residents have either been killed or forced to flee.
If Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson hoped to undo some of the damage he incurred early Thursday, when he came up empty after being asked about his plans for handling the refugee crisis in Syria, his appearance on Fox News Thursday afternoon may have done him more harm than good.
In a subsequent interview on ABC’s The View, he said: “For those that believe this is a disqualifier, so be it”.
To compensate for blanking on the name of the city at the heart of Syria’s devastating civil war, Johnson attempted to show off how much he knows about the conflict there.
Co-host Joe Scarborough later gave a grave assessment of Johnson’s capabilities.
But the straightforward question about the war-torn Syrian city at the centre of the country’s civil war seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Johnson is the former two-term governor of New Mexico. “Well, no, I do understand Aleppo, and I understand the crisis that is going on”, he said.
Johnson said later that he thought the word was an acronym, releasing a statement saying he “blanked”, but understands the city’s significance. “I don’t think that any time we support regime change that it has resulted in a safer world”.
“You asked ‘what is Aleppo?’ Do you think that foreign policy is so insignificant that somebody running for president of the United States shouldn’t even know what Aleppo is, where Aleppo is, why Aleppo is so important?”
He continued, “So it’s a frightful situation that, in my opinion, can only be brought to an end if we involve Russian Federation directly in bringing about a diplomatic solution to this”. “Yes, I understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict-I talk about them every day”.
The UN special envoy on Syria had said he hoped a deal could be struck between in Geneva on Saturday [3 September 2016] before the G20, at separate meetings in London next week with the main Syrian opposition negotiating committee, and then the UN general assembly in NY later in September.
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On the plus side, Johnson made his apology for the “oops” moment as relatable as any political mea culpa we can remember, saying, “I’m incredibly frustrated with myself”.
