Watch Gary Johnson have another self-described 'Aleppo moment'

published 29 September 2016

He probably spent the past week memorizing the name of every city in Syria, and now, Gary Johnson has a new subject to brush up on: World leaders.

During a town hall Wednesday hosted by Hardball's Chris Matthews, the Libertarian presidential candidate was asked to name his favorite foreign leader. Johnson responded by making a strange noise. His running mate, Bill Weld, came in for the save, saying, "Mine was Shimon Peres," the former Israeli president who died on Tuesday. "I'm talking about living," Matthews snapped. "Any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa. Name a foreign leader that you respect."

Referring to his gaffe earlier in the month, when he said he wasn't familiar with Aleppo (the city in Syria that before the civil war was the country's largest, and is currently under siege), Johnson said, "I guess I'm having an Aleppo moment in the former president of Mexico." Matthews kept pestering the struggling candidate to utter the name of any foreign leader, when Weld again came to the rescue, listing off the names of former Mexican presidents. Johnson looked like he wanted to jump for joy when Weld said "Fox," as in Vicente Fox, the ex-president who has called Donald Trump "a crazy guy." Weld, for his part, said his favorite world leader is Germany's Angela Merkel. Maybe this should be realigned as the Weld/Johnson ticket? Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.