Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford says supporters of libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson should be just as concerned about the lack of media coverage of third parties as Johnson’s lack of geographic knowledge

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Story Transcript

DHARNA NOOR, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Dharna Noor.

Recent polls show Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Gary Johnson at 10%. But he came under fire on Thursday when he was questioned about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria. Panelist Mike Barnicle on MSNBC asked him specifically about what he would do about the situation in Aleppo. Let’s take a look at his response.

MIKE BARNICLE: What would you do if you’re elected about Aleppo.

GARY JOHNSON: About?

BARNICLE: Aleppo.

JOHNSON: And what is Aleppo?

BARNICLE: You’re kidding.

JOHNSON: No.

BARNICLE: Aleppo is in Syria. It’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.

JOHNSON: Okay, got it. Got it.

NOOR: Joining us to talk about this today is Glen Ford. Glen is the cofounder and executive editor of the Black Agenda Report and the author of the Big Lie: An Analysis of US Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion. Thanks for joining us Glen.

GLEN FORD: Thanks for having me.

NOOR: So Glen, should Gary Johnson’s 10% of the US vote be concerned that their candidate didn’t know where or even what Aleppo is?

FORD: Yea I think they should be concerned. They should be more concerned that their candidate doesn’t get any play on the major networks or the cable outlets and neither does Jill Stein. But once they get over being upset about that they should yea concern themselves with the fact that he doesn’t seem well versed at least in the geography of foreign policy.

NOOR: Johnson’s gotten a bit less attention on what his actual policy proposal was. So let’s keep playing that clip when he discusses the causes of the Syrian conflict.

JOHNSON: With regard to Syria I do think that it’s a mess. I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that to an end. But when we’ve aligned ourselves with—when we’ve supported the opposition, the Free Syrian Army. The Free Syrian Army is also coupled with the Islamist and then the fact that we’re also supporting the Kurds and it’s just a mess. This is the result of regime change that we end up supporting and inevitably these regime changes have led to a less safe world.

NOOR: Could you talk about his call for an alliance with Russia and his lack of support for regime change.

FORD: Well what this means is that of the four candidates for president, three of them oppose regime change. That is Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Donald Trump most of the time. I think I should note here that Donald Trump says that he could defeat ISIS in 30 days and the corporate media and the Hillary folks just burst out laughing when they hear that as if this is a ridiculous thing to say. I’m not sure what Donald Trump plans to do about ISIS that would get rid of it in 30 days but yes the United States could in fact remove ISIS from the scene as a standing army in something like 30 days simply by stopping its shipments of arms and money and giving diplomatic cover to all these swarms of Jihadist of which ISIS has just won that they support in this proxy war against Syria along with of course Saudi Arabia and other monarchs in the gulf and Turkey and Britain and France. The only thing that keeps this war alive is superpower support and the support of its allies for ISIS. And ISIS would collapse as a standing army and survive thereafter as a terrorist outfit. So what Donald Trump said is not outlandish, although I don’t know what his plan for ISIS is and I don’t think he does either.

NOOR: Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report. Glen thanks so much for joining us again.

FORD: Thank you.

NOOR: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

End

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