Former senator Fred Thompson continues to be his own worst enemy on the path to the White House. Thompson's appearance last weekend at the annual conference hosted by Teddy Forstmann in Aspen was "embarrassing," several attendees have told the Huffington Post, as he botched current events questions and suffered from verbal gaffes.

Amid a gathering of high-profile media, business, and government figures, Thompson made the strange claim that the Islamic group Hezbollah is in Afghanistan (it's based and run out of Lebanon).

Asked whether he would carry over the people and policies of the Bush administration, the Tennessean offered a less than substantive reply: "I would keep the good things and let go of the bad things."

And peppered by former Secretary of State Colin Powell as to why Thompson and other Republican frontrunners seem to be brushing off the African-American vote, the former senator "could not give a cogent answer," a source told the Huffington Post.

The conference, closed-to-the-press by Forstmann Little, featured a number of prominent Republican attendees - including Powell and former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld - and was moderated by PBS' Charlie Rose. The Thompson campaign declined to comment on this report.

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