Gary Johnson Says He'd Win the Debates — With His Tongue Out

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson said in an interview Thursday that he's convinced he'd poll as high as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton if he was allowed to debate — demonstrating to MSNBC's Kasie Hunt while speaking with his tongue sticking out that he'd win talking even like that.

The exchange, recorded while Hunt and Johnson sat close to each other on a park bench, started out conventionally enough, with the Libertarian nominee telling Hunt that if he could just get on the debate stage, he could pull even and "it wouldn't have anything to do with my debate performance either."

"It would just be that people would recognize that there's another choice and that there would be an examination of me and Bill Weld as to who we are and what we've done and based on that," he told Hunt. "I think I could stand up there for the whole debate and not say anything through the whole debate and emerge as the leader."

And then he started talking with his tongue clenched out, between his teeth.

"He really did that?" MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski exclaimed, after the interview clip was shown on the "Morning Joe" program.

"That never happened to me in an interview before," Hunt replied. "Otherwise we had a very lengthy extended conversation."

"No. No," Brzezinski said. "Okay. So why isn't Bill Weld at the top of the ticket? What happened there? Who made that up? What's going on? Why isn't there a third option?"

Then she turned to former George W. Bush communications aide Nicolle Wallace, asking her if she would "feel weird" if a man sitting next to her stuck his tongue out and talked.

"What I think about him is that if he stopped talking his numbers would go up," Wallace said.

The video clip comes on the heels of Johnson's "what is Aleppo" slipup on the "Morning Joe" program, when he drew a blank when asked about the situation in the Syrian city.

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