Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has made headlines again, and not for a good reason. (If you have no idea who that even is, we’ve got you covered over at the Complex Election Survival Guide.) Failing to come up with an answer to who his favorite living leader was, the candidate said he was having an “Aleppo moment"—a reference to the now-infamous moment earlier this month Johnson revealed he had no idea what Aleppo was.
This Aleppo moment happened at a town hall Wednesday when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Johnson to name his favorite foreign leader that he respects and looks up to. Johnson, stumped, is silent as Matthews presses on, saying, "Anywhere. Any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa.”
Johnson then admitted, "I guess I'm having an Aleppo moment in the former president of Mexico." Johnson couldn’t recall the leader’s name until the Libertarian's running mate Bill Weld started rattling off names, and eventually arrived at former Mexican President Vicente Fox. Fox has been vocally anti-Donald Trump during the election, saying Mexico will not pay for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.
Aleppo, in case you didn’t know (which is excusable because you’re not running to president of the United States) is a war torn city in Syria. You may even be familiar with one of Aleppo’s smallest residents, five-year-old Omran Daqneesh. A photo of Daqneesh covered in blood and dust after an airstrike went viral last month. The young child survived the airstrike, but his older brother did not.
