Obama blames media for America's ISIS fears

In the wake of this month's Muslim-inspired massacre in California, the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since 2001, President Obama has found a new scapegoat to blame: the American news media.

"If you've been watching television for the last month, all you have been seeing, all you have been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you," Obama told National Public Radio for an interview that aired Monday.

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Islamic radicals Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his ISIS-supporting wife Tashfeen Malik, 27, killed 14 during their Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino, California.

U.S. officials also arrested and charged two Americans with supporting the Sunni terror network since the onslaught.

Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, was arrested in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dec. 9. He is the 10th man arrested in the Twin Cities due to alleged ties with ISIS. Jalil Ibn Ameer Aziz, 19, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested Dec. 17.

"Look, the media is pursuing ratings," Obama said, CNN reported Monday. "This is a legitimate news story. I think that, you know, it's up to the media to make a determination about how they want to cover things."

ISIS fighters (Wikimedia)

The president said one "legitimate criticism" of his administration is that he has not done a good enough job communicating "all the work that we've been doing for more than a year now to defeat ISIL."

The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS since June 2014 has relied heavily on airstrikes to degrade and destroy the Islamic terror network in Iraq and Syria. Obama's strategy has been criticized as inept in the wake of a refugee crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands migrants flee for Western countries.

The president also said ISIS was "contained" one day prior to the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, France, which killed 130.

"I don't think we're winning, but I wouldn't say we're losing, either," U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" May 24. "I think it's something of a neutral stalemate. I think there's an ebb and flow."

The free WND special report “ISIS Rising,” by Middle East expert and former Department of Defense analyst Michael Maloof, will answer your questions about the jihadist army threatening the West.

Obama expects the U.S. to absorb 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016 and up to 100,000 from any country by the end of 2017. He has likened Republican concerns that ISIS would use the program as a Trojan horse for terror as fear-mongering.

"ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death. They account for a tiny fraction of more than one billion Muslims around the world," Obama said Dec. 18 while speaking at the National Counterterrorism Center in Tysons Corner, Virginia, WND reported.

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