MSNBC’s Morning Joe panel offered Johnson a chance to discuss foreign policy, a particular area of concern for Libertarians.
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The response stunned the show’s panel, prompting Mike Barnicle, who posed the initial question, to reply “you’re kidding”.
The largest city in Syria, Aleppo is now at the heart of the country’s civil war and refugee crisis.
Johnson then apparently postponed and interview later Thursday morning on a NY talk radio program.
“I’d let it go off”, Johnson quipped.
“OK, got it, got it”, Mr Johnson cut him off, presumably realising that with three small words he had just made himself the inevitable butt of ridicule for if not one news cycle then for several and possibly doomed any notion of his making real progress towards the White House.
The embarrassing exchange followed a forum on Wednesday night in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump sought to showcase their national security and defense credentials.
After the MSNBC interview, Johnson told Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin “I am incredibly frustrated with myself”. Others, taking a rather unkind view, said being a regular marijuana user he should not have stopped, which he has for the duration of the campaign.
Wherever one stands politically, I firmly believe that each of us needs to vote for the candidate we most prefer, whoever that may be, and not for a lesser evil.
Gary Johnson, struggling to move his poll numbers high enough to earn a spot in the presidential debates, is beginning his first television advertising of the 2016 campaign. Since August, airstrikes by both Syrian and Russian planes on the city have intensified there, and this week, allegations emerged of the use of chemical weapons on Aleppo’s rebel-held neighborhoods. “Can I name every city in Syria? No”.
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times quickly published the definitive piece for the paper of record excoriating Johnson for his ignorance.
JOHNSON: Well, I think diplomatically that that is the – that that has to be the solution, is joining hands with Russian Federation to bring – to bring this civil war to an end.
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“What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo”, Johnson was asked. But hit with “What about Aleppo?”, I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict’. “I think that can happen to anybody”. I’ll admit if someone brought up Aleppo outside of a context of discussing Syria it is quite possible I wouldn’t have immediate recognition either (especially if I haven’t had a proper amount of caffeine).
