Human gaffe machine and Libertarian candidate for president Gary Johnson just can’t seem to remove his foot from his mouth. On Tuesday, the former governor of New Mexico made appearances on CNN and MSNBC before noon — and managed to mangle his inability to name a foreign leader he admires and lack of geographical knowledge even further.
First, Johnson appeared via satellite on CNN’s “New Day” with Alisyn Camerota, who immediately addressed his recent stumbles. “I just want to ask you about some of the foreign policy flubs that you’ve had publicly lately,” she said. “First, there was the Aleppo moment where you didn’t know what Aleppo was, and then you couldn’t name your favorite foreign leader. What’s going on with you and foreign affairs? How do you explain those moments?”
“Well, Alisyn, what is it five days now after the ‘name your favorite foreign leader,’ and I still can’t do that,” Johnson replied. “Well, why not?” she asked. At this, Johnson grew visibly agitated. “Favorite! Favorite foreign leader!” he yelled:
“I can’t name a — you know, getting involved in politics having never been involved in politics before, I held a lot of people in this country on pedestals. And then I get to meet them up front and personal and I find out that they’re all about getting reelected, that they’re not about issues, that they’re a lot of empty suits that I held up on pedestals. So I’m a real skeptic when it comes to elected leaders. Okay, so I point out an elected leader that I admire and then all of a sudden I’ve gotta defend them against things that I’m not even aware of … If that’s a disqualifier for president, then so be it.”
Johnson went on to defend the fact that he didn’t know what Aleppo was by saying the United States shouldn’t be intervening in Syria in the first place. Incorrectly asserting that the U.S. is fighting on “both sides” of the Syrian civil war, he asked rhetorically, “but I guess because you can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on foreign leaders and geographic locations, that now somehow you’re qualified to put us in that situation?”
A few hours later, Johnson appeared on MSNBC and reiterated his comments about the difficulty he has choosing a world leader he admires. “Maybe I think too much,” he told Andrea Mitchell. “You’re running to be Commander-in-Chief,” she replied. “Foreign policy and unexpected events are part of the portfolio.”
Johnson interrupted her to repeat his line about I’s and T’s. “You know, we’re putting our military in this horrible situation where we go in and support regime change, they get involved in civil wars where hundreds of thousands of innocent people are in a crossfire, we’re literally shooting at ourselves because we support both sides of conflicts, Syria as an example, and we wonder why our servicemen and women suffer from PSD in the first place.” (We assume he meant PTSD, about which Donald Trump recently suggested only weak people suffer from.)
You can watch a clip of Johnson on MSNBC below.
(Via Talking Points Memo)
