The New York Times incorrectly cited Aleppo as the capital of the Islamic State while skewering Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson for his embarrassing lack of knowledge regarding the city.
NYT journalist Alan Rappeport described Johnson’s gaffe as a being a potentially “serious blow” to his hopes of making the debate stage, as he himself labeled Aleppo as ISIS’s de facto capital. To make matters worse, NYT had to run a correction to the correction after describing Aleppo as the capital of Syria.
To clarify the matter, Damascus is the capital of Syria and Raqqa is the de facto capital of ISIS. Aleppo, the war-torn city at the center of the ongoing Syrian conflict, was the country’s largest city before the civil war began in 2011. Today, many of the city’s residents have either been killed or forced to flee.
The series of fumbles regarding Aleppo began Thursday morning, when Johnson was asked by MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle what he would do to solve the crisis in Aleppo.
“And what is Aleppo?” replied Johnson.
As Rappeport put it, Johnson then “struggled to recover,” much in the same way NYT did after publishing the piece.
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