In an opinion piece, he wrote in 2016 that Aleppo had been liberated from the violent militants who had ruled it for three years, but were liberated by Bashar al-Assad's forces. However, the American public was told "convoluted nonsense" about the war. He commented further: "At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on 'an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva.'