This remix of Gary Johnson’s latest ‘Aleppo moment’ is AH-MA-ZING

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, is not having a good year. Thanks to the major party candidates’ historic unpopularity, he’s getting a lot of media attention. But, unfortunately for Johnson, those media appearances always seem to include questions on foreign affairs.

Last night on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews asked Johnson to name his favorite foreign leader. Johnson just plain old couldn’t do it, despite Matthews giving him about a thousand chances. “You gotta do this,” the ever-truculent Matthews said, offering encouragement by naming two countries—our next door neighbors—and four continents: “Anywhere. Any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa. Name a foreign leader that you respect.”

Nothing. Crickets.

The whole thing was very sad to watch—and Man Bartlett decided to capture that emotion in a mash-up, which is here on Twitter for your viewing pleasure:

Eventually, Johnson picked the former president of Mexico—but couldn’t offer a name until his running mate, Bill Weld, started going down the list.

As Johnson himself said, it was an “Aleppo moment”—a reference to the time, also sad, when the candidate didn’t know Aleppo, the ancient Syrian city at the center of the country’s brutal civil war.

In the end Johnson was, with an assist, able to remember the last name of a former world leader—whose name also happens to be an English noun. To Johnson’s credit, Fox’s PAN party does share some of libertarianism’s economic ideologies, though their positions on abortion and marriage equality are far afield of Johnson’s own social liberalism. But, then again, one doesn’t become a libertarian by overly concerning themselves with what’s going on in the rest of the world.

Artist. Radical Seeker. Senior Social Media Manager at Fusion.