Presidential candidate doesn't seem to know what Aleppo is
Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian Party presidential candidate, failed to respond a simple foreign policy question about Aleppo, Syria's second largest city that has been hit in recent weeks by a series of chemical attacks.
Johnson was in an interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe panelist Mike Barnicle, who asked him: “What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?” in reference to the refugee crisis.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
He replied asking, "What is Aleppo?" To which Barnicle said, stunned: “You’re kidding."
You May Also Like
But Johnson shook his head as Barnicle explained that Aleppo is “the epicenter of the refugee crisis” in Syria.
“OK, Got it. Well, with regard to Syria, I do think that it’s a mess,” Johnson said.
Aleppo is a key strategic front for all the powers entangled in Syria's bloody civil war.
In August, a heartbreaking picture of a 3-year-old boy being loaded into the emergency vehicle was shared widely as the human toll of the conflict was thrown again into stark relief.
As predicted, Johnson's comments were slammed across Twitter — though The New York Times also got some attention for mistakenly calling Aleppo "de-facto capital of the Islamic State" in an article:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Raqqa in Syria is considered by the Islamist militant group their de-facto capital.
The New York Times later issued a correction:
After the interview, Johnson said he was "incredibly frustrated with myself" for not identifying Aleppo:
Johnson's campaign also issued an apology saying he "blanked."
"I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict. I blanked. It happens, and it will happen again during the course of this campaign," he said.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
