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I remember when Gary Johnson got absolutely crucified for not knowing what Aleppo was; a name I hadn't heard before or since that interview.
Johnson not knowing what Aleppo was isn’t really a great example of people being unfairly crucified, because Aleppo had just spent a fair amount of time in the news cycle as part of the Syrian civil war and the invasion from Turkey. You had to really not to be paying attention to the news to miss it, which is fine for random people, but perhaps not ideal for a presidential candidate
It wasn't forefront of my mind but I knew a conflict was happening in Syria at the time and primarily the media reported it as a "Syrian conflict".
Yeah I mean general you, not you specifically, not ragging on you for not being on the cutting edge of political knowledge almost a decade ago.
I was just thinking that as I was reading this article. Remember the shit Quayle got for adding an E to the end of potato?
I think the average person could maybe be forgiven not knowing Aleppo
But for anyone who was paying attention to world/middle east news at the time, which I think is reasonable to expect of someone running for president, the Syrian Civil War, and specifically the battle of Aleppo was in full swing at the time, it was a fairly big news story .
And so a lot of people were paying attention to Syria at the time this was around the same time that ISIS was pretty big in the news, the last "S" standing, of course, for Syria. If you were on Reddit at the time you might remember a whole lot of people seemed to think it was really important to call them "Daesh" instead of "ISIS." So while maybe not quite a household name, but probably something that would have rang some bells for a lot of people to at least be able to say "oh yeah, that's a city in Syria where something is happening right now"
Now with that said, I am actually willing to give him a little leeway on that, I'm pretty sure I remember that question being a little out of left-field, like immediately before the "and what would you do about Aleppo?" question they were talking about something completely different and there wasn't really anything to segue from that to the topic of Syria, and I can understand that, we all have brain-farts now and then, and it can take a second for your brain to switch gears, I think we've all experienced that once or twice.
I'd much rather have a leader willing to admit when they don''t know something than one who pretends to know everything better than everyone in the room.
That's all well and good when you're asking them for knowledge that's outside of what's needed for their core job functions
However being aware of what's going on in the world is kind of a big part of what is expected of the president. And again, this was actually a pretty big story, there was a lot of debate around if/how the US would/should be involved
A presidential candidate at that time not knowing what Aleppo is, would be kind of like one today not knowing what Crimea is.
When a candidate is doing an interview like this, it's sort of like they're doing a job interview for the role of president with the entire country, because of course they can't go interview with every citizen one-on-one. If you were hiring, for example, a plumber, for a job, and you asked them about how they would do something with PEX pipe because that's part of what's going to be needed on the job, and they replied "what's PEX pipe?" You'd probably go with a different applicant.
Not that that necessarily means that the applicant is a bad plumber, they might be an absolute wizard who can solder copper pipe upsidedown, blindfolded, and with one hand tied behind his back but the job at-hand needs PEX and not copper. Sure, they could probably learn to work with PEX, but it would take time to get them up to speed and you need to hit the ground running with the project to get it done before the drywallers can do their job.
And again, I don't think that was really the case with him here, once prompted that it was about the situation in Syria he was able to rattle off a reasonably coherent plan of how it should be handled (not that I particularly agreed with how he would have handled it, but it was generally in-line with his other policies) so I think it just took him a moment to switch gears and realize they were talking about something else now.
Who's Gary Johnson?
He was the libertarian presidential candidate a few elections back
He's confused? Wow, how unusual...
News: "look at Biden's dementia!"
Also news: "Trump is confused?"
I used to say Trump is at least less senile than Biden...I liked those times when I believed that at least...
It's sad how many people are swayed by "coherent" ramblings.
Biden had some bad ramblings, but mostly spoke about legitimate politics and policies. Trump regularly struggles to put together a combination of words that would fit in normal political discourse.
The worst drunken discourse at my local pub is more coherent than the most coherent of Trump's utterances.
When was that, 1980?
You were a rube to ever have thought that.
Yea I know lol
"appeared to confuse"? His brain is mush; there's no "appearing" about it. Tell it like it is.
The corporate media have been sanewashing him since day one. Don't expect them to stop, no matter how much worse he gets. They'll still be doing it when he literally just mumbles incomprehensibly.
He also settled the war between "Aberbijian" and "Albania".
Aberbijian has never invaded Albania, so he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
(Americans and geography...)
Many people don't know this, but I also settled the horrific conflict between Zootopia and Californistan that left trillions dead, just in case there are peace prize nominations being thrown around.
And he prevented the Bowling Green Massacre.
The Red Hot Furry Pepper Wars were truly a tragedy.
"Bababiba and Albania" would be more correct.
Honestly I have IRL morons claiming Trump ended these wars in Azerbijan and Armenia and also in Kongo or some other African country.
Me telling them this was just Trump doing nothing and being there for the photo in the white house was not accepted.
Also apparently whataboutism by me when I ask about these wars in Ukraine and Gaza that were supposed to be ended.
Good that some people somewhere put down their rusty AKs and pitchforks for some amount of time don't get me wrong. But next level cope to say he ends wars.
He's tried to end the war in Ukraine by pressuring Zelenskyy to surrender. And in Gaza, he's pushed to end the war by telling the Israelis to hurry up and "finish the job."
In his first term, he also ended the Afghan war by surrendering to the Taliban and selling out every Afghan who supported the previous government, handing them over for almost certain torture and execution.
This isn't the first time he's done this in like the last week either
Like when he stopped the war between Abrzenban and Albania?
Edit: oh, like the article says.
25th Amendment. It's time, no, it's overdue.
Only downside of this is JD Vance.
Downside is his middle name. That's the D in JD.
First name: Just. He's Just Downside.
The theory I hear is to nuke Trump after 2 years, then JD can rule for 10 years.
I don't buy it though. I think by the time mid terms comes around Trump will have started a war of some sort, rolled troops to large cities, and shut down voting forever.
Lemmy shill for Big Sofa.
I honestly don’t know which I’d prefer. On the one hand, Trump’s obviously compromised mental condition makes him much easier to control as puppets go, but it also significantly hampers his effectiveness. On the other hand, JD Vance is likely more dangerous with the reigns of power than Trump on account of being not completely stupid, but he lacks the “charisma” (air quotes and a heavy eye roll on that one) and allegiance of the MAGA crowd that Trump has.
Though, after saying all that, it’s not like things are going to get better as they are, and it’s not like the MAGA crowd is ever going to acknowledge Trump’s declining mental state, no matter how loudly they screamed about Biden’s, so I figure it’s probably worth it to roll the dice to see if we can splinter the right. Unfortunately, that risk of splinter is probably precisely why the 25th won’t be invoked by Vance and the cabinet - the MAGA crowd would see it as a betrayal, I should think.
This week it's "Armenia and Cambodia" while just last week:
Trump touts his peace deal between ‘Aberbaijan and Albania’ – getting both countries’ names wrong
Just an average day
I'm sure I missed some. He's like the King Midas of making peace.
King Mierdas maybe
Everything he touches turns to 💩
Yeah, but bIdEnSoOlD!
Jake Tapper where you at??!