13 January 2016•Update: 13 January 2016
WASHINGTON
Americans should reject “politics that target people because of race or religion”, President Barack Obama said in his final State of the Union address late Tuesday.
A significant section of the president’s hour-long speech was reserved for criticism of rhetoric that betrayed American values -- widely interpreted as an attack on Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, although Obama did not mention the real estate billionaire by name.
“As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Obama said.
“We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”
Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election has been marked by complaints of racism and Islamophobia. Last month, he called for Muslims to be barred from entering the U.S. in the wake of a Daesh-inspired attack in California that killed 14 people.
Addressing lawmakers, Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices, Obama said tolerance was “what makes America great” and attacks on Muslims “betrays who we are as a country”.
Obama outlined the U.S.’s foreign policy goals as protecting Americans and fighting terrorism.
He said that although al-Qaeda and Daesh posed a “direct threat” to U.S. nationals, they did not threaten the “national existence”.
“Our foreign policy must be focused on the threat from ISIL and al-Qaeda,” Obama said, using another acronym for Daesh.
He said the U.S. had built a global coalition to “prevent a nuclear-armed Iran” and normalized relations with Cuba after 50 years of isolating its Caribbean neighbor.
Obama reiterated his determination to close the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. “I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo: it’s expensive, it’s unnecessary and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies,” he said.
One topic missing from the speech was gun control, an issue close to Obama’s heart. Last week he wept as he condemned gun violence in the U.S. and vowed to curb the problem.
