WASHINGTON, United States - Former first lady Michelle Obama added her voice Friday to the Democratic outcry following President Donald Trump's attack on four ethnic minority congresswomen, saying "there's a place for all of us."
"What truly makes our country great is its diversity... Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there's a place for all of us," Obama tweeted, without mentioning Trump.
"We must remember it's not my America or your America. It's our America."
Trump has come under intense fire after he attacked four first-term Democratic congresswomen known as the "Squad."
In a rare move, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday rebuked Trump for "racist comments" after he said the four should "go back" to their countries of origin if they are not happy in the United States.
But chants of "Send her back!" directed at Somali-born congresswoman Ilhan Omar broke out at Trump's "Make America Great Again" rally in Greenville, North Carolina on Wednesday night.
Trump claimed to reporters in the Oval Office the following day that he was not pleased by the taunts and attempted to cut them short.
Television footage, however, showed he let the chant continue for more than 10 seconds before he resumed speaking.
"Those are incredible people. Those are incredible patriots," Trump told reporters outside the White House on Friday when asked about the chants.
"She's lucky to be where she is, let me tell you," he added about Omar.
The first-term lawmakers -- all but one of whom, Omar, were born in the United States -- are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American descent.
Some Republicans have urged Trump to tone down the rhetoric, but the president has made it clear that attacks on the "Squad" will be a centerpiece of his 2020 re-election strategy -- despite the risk of inflaming racial tensions and widening the partisan divide.
Omar responded to the chants by condemning Trump's "racist remarks" and branding him a "fascist."
The president's "nightmare is seeing a Somali immigrant refugee rise to Congress," she told supporters when she returned home to Minnesota Thursday night.
"We are going to continue to be a nightmare to this president, because his policies are a nightmare to us," she said through a megaphone to the cheering crowd at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
A one-time gym trainer from rural Australia who became steeped in neo-fascist ideology during travels in Europe, Brenton Tarrant described himself as an "ordinary white man" -- until he became anything but ordinary.
The gunman behind the massacre of 49 people in two New Zealand mosques flashed a white power sign during a brief court appearance Saturday, but he was not on any terrorist watch-list and appeared to have no criminal history.
Tarrant, 28, grew up in the small town of Grafton in northern New South Wales, where he graduated high school before earning some fitness qualifications and going on to find work at a local gym in 2009.
The gym's owner, Tracey Gray, described him as a hard-working trainer but said he appeared to have been changed by his travels in Europe and Asia -- which social media posts suggested included trips as far afield as Pakistan and North Korea.
"I think something must have changed in him during the years he spent travelling overseas," Gray told national broadcaster ABC.
"Somewhere along the lines, experiences or a group have got a hold of him," she said.
Gray's speculation was backed up by a rambling, hate-filled, manifesto Tarrant posted to social media ahead of the Christchurch killings.
In the 74-page screed, he says he first began considering an attack in April and May of 2017 while travelling in France and elsewhere in Western Europe.
He mentions being shocked at the "invasion" of French cities by immigrants and his "despair" at the French presidential vote that year which saw pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron defeat his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen.
In a brief biographical sketch included in his manifesto, Tarrant describes himself as "just a ordinary white man... born in Australia to a working class, low income family".
His childhood was "regular" and, he insisted, issue-free. He "barely" achieved a passing grade in school and had no interest in pursuing higher education.
According to media reports, his father died of cancer in 2010 and gym owner Gray said she believed he had a mother and sister still living in Grafton.
Tarrant left the gym in 2011 and his travels, he says, were funded by money he made investing in Bitconnect -- an open source cryptocurrency that collapsed in early 2018 amid charges it was a glorified Ponzi scheme.
Two modified semi-automatic weapons -- reportedly AR-15s -- two shotguns and a lever-action gun were used in Friday's deadly rampage, and photos of the weaponry with distinctive writing on them were posted on social media days before.
Scrawled in English and several Eastern European languages were the names of numerous historical military figures -- many of them Europeans involved in fighting the Ottoman forces in the 15th and 16th centuries. A few took part in the Crusades, centuries earlier.
Ankara on Friday said it was investigating Tarrant's multiple visits to Turkey, and who he might have met while he was there.
The Bulgarian government has also said it was looking into Tarrant, who apparently visited the country late last year, as well as having earlier travelled to other parts of the Balkans -- including Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tarrant's manifesto said he took "inspiration" from other right-wing extremists including racist Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011 motivated by his hatred of multiculturalism.
Tarrant described Oswald Mosley, a notorious British fascist leader and anti-Semite from the 1930s, as "the person from history closest to my own beliefs".
source: news.abs-cbn.com
