Agencies
Washington, Sept 29: US First Lady Michelle Obama took a dig at Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying America “needs an adult in the White House” and not a person who is “erratic and threatening”. “When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a President just cannot pop off or lash out irrationally. No, we need an adult in the White House, I guarantee you,” she said at an election rally in support of Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia as she made a strong pitch for the 68-year-old Democratic Presidential candidate. Michelle, without mentioning Trump, 70, said the US needs someone who is compassionate.
“Someone who will be a role model for our kids. Someone who is not just in this for themselves but for the good of this entire country – all of us. At the end of the day, the Presidency does not change who you are, it reveals who you are and the same is true of a Presidential campaign,” she said. US Presidential campaigns, Michelle said, are very long – nearly two-and-a-half years, or half of one Presidential term. “So if a candidate is erratic and threatening; if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fears and lies on the campaign trail; if a candidate thinks that not paying taxes makes you smart, or that it is good business when people lose their homes; if a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women, about how we look, how we act – well, sadly, that is who that candidate really is. That is the kind of President they will be,” she said.
Michelle said a candidate is not going to suddenly change once they are in office – just the opposite, in fact. “Because the minute that individual takes that oath, they are under the hottest, harshest light there is, and there is no way to hide who they really are. But see, at that point, it is too late. They are the leader of the world’s largest economy, Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force on Earth. With every word they utter, they can start wars, crash markets, fundamentally change the course of this planet,” she warned. Michelle said Clinton is the best one to be the next President of the US.
Inset: Obama defends decision
Washington: US President Barack Obama has defended his decision not to use the term ‘Islamic terrorism’, saying it is a “sort of manufactured” issue and there is no religious rationale to associate Islam with those who kill people. “The truth of the matter is, this is an issue that has been sort of manufactured, because there is no doubt that where we see terrorist organisations like Al Qaida or IS, they have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse for basically barbarism and death,” Obama said at a military town hall in Virginia. “These are people who kill children, kill Muslims, take sex slaves. There’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do,” he said.
