Washington: President Barack Obama has taken a swipe at presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's plans to ban Muslims from entering America and build walls between the US and other nations, saying the biggest challenges cannot be solved in isolation.
Though he did not name Trump, Obama made it clear what he thinks about the 69-year-old real estate tycoon's campaign and policy proposals in a highly political commencement speech at Rutgers University yesterday.
"The world is more interconnected than ever before, and it's becoming more connected every day. Building walls won't change that," Obama said apparently referring to Trump's proposals to build a wall at the US-Mexico border.
The President also told the graduates to stand up to those who say that America was better in the past. He also asked graduates to tout their knowledge and not brag about their ignorance.
"Just as America is better, the world is better than when I graduated. Since I graduated, an Iron Curtain fell, apartheid ended.
There's more democracy. We virtually eliminated certain diseases like polio. We've cut extreme poverty drastically. We've cut infant mortality by an enormous amount," he said.
"Now, I say all these things not to make you complacent.
"Suggesting that we can build an endless wall along our borders, and blame our challenges on immigrants -- that doesn't just run counter to our history as the world's melting pot; it contradicts the evidence that our growth and our innovation and our dynamism has always been spurred by our ability to attract strivers from every corner of the globe," Obama said.
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