Can I call a friend?

Philadelphia Daily News

Although we get a lot of laughs out of Donald Trump’s complete lack of knowledge about things a president should know, according to the New York Times, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, is not exactly up to speed on world news either.  For example, when asked about the crisis in Aleppo, Syria, he drew a complete blank.

“What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the war-torn Syrian city.

When pressed as to whether he was serious, Mr. Johnson indicated that he really was not aware of the city, which has been widely covered during the years that Syria has been engulfed in civil war. After Mike Barnicle, an MSNBC commentator who is often part of the “Morning Joe” program panel, explained that Aleppo was the center of Syria’s refugee crisis, Mr. Johnson struggled to recover.

“O.K., got it,” he said, explaining that he thinks that the United States must partner with Russia to diplomatically improve the situation there. “With regard to Syria, I do think that it’s a mess.

Of course, we could offer the excuse that Johnson hasn’t received the “briefings” that Trump and Clinton have received.  Or we might even go so far as to state that Johnson doesn’t care about “world affairs”, since the Libertarian platform has always promoted Isolationism.  But that wouldn’t explain why he wasn’t aware of something that’s been in the general news for several years.   As much as I’d like a third-party voter turnout to throw a good, solid scare into the leaders of both the Democrats and the Republicans (e.g., when Ross Perot got almost 19% of the vote in 1992), third-partiers really have to try harder if they’re going to put up any kind of a show that will drown out the current circus.

 

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