SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) – Opening Christmas vacation on a somber note, President Barack Obama said meeting with the loved ones of 14 holiday revelers who were fatally shot two weeks ago in Southern California was a reminder “of what’s good in this country”.
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The Obamas departed California about 11 p.m. for their stay in Obama’s home state.
Of the families, he remarked: “They’re all representative of the strength and the unity and the love in this community”.
Fourteen people died in the shootings in San Bernardino, California on December 2, when radicalized Muslims Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik opened fire on Farook’s co-workers at a holiday party.
As for USA efforts to track potential attackers, Obama said social media postings by potential militant suspects are constantly being reviewed by law enforcement agencies but that private online communications are far more hard to track. Both pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
In the declaration, Brown mentions that 26 people were wounded in the attack.
Closing out a tumultuous year, President Barack Obama sought to lay the groundwork Friday for his last year in office by vowing not to fade in the background but instead use his remaining months to push longstanding goals to fruition. The White House has indicated Obama will sign it.
He said the President had not shown leadership in the immediate aftermath. Obama has vacationed in Hawaii every year since taking office.
The president’s year-end session with reporters was buoyed by what he considered solid global accomplishments on climate change, trade deals, a nuclear deal with Iran, and at home, an improving economy and a just-completed budget deal with Congress. He cited a Pacific trade pact and criminal justice reform as examples.
“Congress and I have a long runway to get some things done for the American people”, he said. Those successes have been tempered by a lack of progress on the president’s other priorities, like closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Many lawmakers strongly oppose closing the site. “In 2016, I’m going to leave it all out on the field”, he said.
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Obama sidestepped a question on whether he felt he had the power through executive action to close the Guantanamo facility and transfer detainees out of the site.
