Obama says no sign ‘at this point’ that NY, NJ bombs tied to Minn. stabbings
President Obama said Monday that investigators “at this point” see no connection between stabbings a mall in Minnesota and bombs planted in New York and New Jersey. He also told Americans their best weapon against terrorists is refusing to give in to fear.
“By showing those who want to do us harm that they will never beat us, by showing the entire world that, as Americans, we do not and never will give in to fear, that’s going to be the most important ingredient in us defeating those who would carry out terrorist acts against us,” Obama said in New York.
Obama, making his first public remarks on the Saturday night blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan, did not explicitly tie the so-called Islamic State to the attack, or to explosives found in New Jersey, or to the stabbings at a busy mall in St. Cloud, Minn. An ISIS-linked news agency praised the Minnesota attacker, who injured nine people before he was fatally shot by police.
Still, he said, the group “is instigating a lot of people over the Internet to carry out attacks” and his administration will work with high-tech firms as well as community and religious leaders to choke off that kind of recruitment. And the U.S. military will work with its partners to target Islamic State in its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
“We are gonna continue to go after them. We’re gonna take out their leaders. We’re gonna take out their infrastructure,” Obama said. “As we take away more of their territory, it exposes ISIL as the failed cause that it is and it helps to undermine their ideology, which over time, will make it harder for them to recruit and inspire people to violence.”
Obama said he had spoken to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, promising the full resources of the federal government to respond to the weekend’s events.
“We’re gonna make sure that everybody’s working together seamlessly as one team to get to the bottom of what happened, to find those responsible and to make sure that justice is done,” the president said.
Obama said he had also spoken to Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton about the stabbing attacks on Saturday. “At this point, we see no connection between that incident and what happened here in New York and New Jersey,” the president said.
Obama said Americans have a duty to help law enforcement and a responsibility not to panic in the face of unpredictable violence. He cited people in New York and New Jersey who, perhaps because of the 9/11 attacks and superstorm Sandy, have taken the attacks in stride.
“Folks around here, you know, they don’t get scared. They’re tough, they’re resilient, they go about their business every single day,” he said. “That’s the kind of strength that makes me so proud to be an American, and that’s the kind of strength that is gonna be absolutely critical, not just in the days to come, but in the years to come.”
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