US President Barack Obama telephoned French President Francois Hollande and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to congratulate them for the arrest of top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, officials said today.
"Obama called Hollande to congratulate him for the intervention," the French presidency told AFP, hours after Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels.
"Congratulations from the President of the United States. Belgium and France stand united in the fight against terrorism," Michel said on his official twitter account, adding a picture of himself on the phone, standing beside the French president.
However, Obama said he worries about inequality because he
thinks that if the country is not investing in making sure everybody plays a role in this economy, the economy will not grow as fast.
"I think it will also lead to further and further separation between us as Americans, not just along racial lines," he said.
"There are a whole bunch of folks who voted for the President-elect because they feel forgotten and disenfranchised. They feel as if they're being looked down on. They feel as if their kids aren't going to have the same opportunities as they did," he said.
Obama said that the people don't want to have an America in which a very small sliver of people are doing really well and everybody else is fighting for scraps.
"Because that's often times when racial divisions get magnified, because people think, well, the only way I'm going to get ahead is if I make sure somebody else gets less, somebody who doesn't look like me or doesn't worship at the same place I do. That's not a good recipe for our democracy," he said.
