Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, on Thursday blasted Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson for his comments comparing deaths resulting from U.S. military operations in Syria to those caused by government forces.
{mosads}“As the father of somebody in the military, I just can’t fathom a comment like that,” Kaine said, as first reported by The New York Times.
The Virginia Democrat went on to criticize Johnson for his “profound misunderstanding of global affairs” and equate him with the Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“Two of the three candidates clearly don’t have an understanding for the role of our military and the role that a commander in chief needs to play in supporting our military,” he said.
When Johnson was asked if he saw moral equivalence between deaths from U.S. airstrikes and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s murder of his own people, the former New Mexico governor wryly stated “of course not.”
“Well no, of course not — we’re so much better than all that,” Johnson told the Times on Wednesday. “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we bomb the hospital and 60 people are killed in the hospital.”
Kaine also mentioned Johnson’s recent Aleppo gaffe, in which the Libertarian nominee did not recognize the city at the heart of the Syrian refugee crisis during a television interview.
“Now this is the same guy who didn’t know what Aleppo was,” Kaine said, “so, you know, he’s already demonstrated he doesn’t understand the situation in Syria.”