In a recent television appearanceMSNBC’s Morning Joe, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson drew a complete blank when asked about Aleppo, a city in Syria, for which he drew sharp criticism. In this episode, Johnson explains his gaffe and tells us why he still believes he has a legitimate chance to win the presidency.

Johnson on the conflict in Syria (1:50-3:38)

“I understand the policy. The place…I probably will get places wrong, I’ll get names wrong, but policy wise…I’d like to make some lemonade out of this, which is the following… 

“Alright, Aleppo, the epicenter of what is happening, where it all started in 2012. You have the current regime, Assad regime, east side of Aleppo, west side you’ve got the Free Syrian Army, which we support…but they’re allied with ISIS. They’re allies with the Islamists. 

“They both want to take down Assad. Now, before any of this happened we were actually paying Assad to suppress or fight ISIS before any of this started. And then we’re also supporting the Kurds in their fight against ISIS and yet we want to see ISIS and our Free Syrian Army succeed against the Syrian regime…the Kurds are sideways with Turkey, who are our allies.

“Can this get anymore convoluted? This is the result of whenever we go in and support regime change.” 

Johnson on his chances of winning the presidency (11:22-11:59)

“I did run in the Republican primary in 2012 and really felt shut out. I felt as though the Republican National Committee would have nothing to do with somebody who was socially inclusive. I think that it was either socially conservative or hit the highway, and that’s what I experienced.

"I experienced exclusion in ways that go completely unnoticed by everyone, and that exclusion was being not in the debates by way of not even being in the polls that determined who was in the debates.”