President Obama shares emotional video of child who asks to host Syrian refugee
NEW YORK -- President Barack Obama shared an emotional video of a 6-year-old New York boy who wants to take in a young Syrian refugee as part of his own family.
The video features a little boy named Alex who wrote to the president asking to host Omran Daqneesh, the 5-year-old Syrian boy shown in a heartbreaking picture out of Aleppo, Syria.
Obama read the letter during a summit on refugees he hosted earlier this week at the UN General Assembly, calling for nations to adopt the same compassion shown by the young boy.
Within 16 hours, the video, which was posted to Obama's Facebook page on Wednesday night, earned 154,000 likes and was viewed 7.9 million times, making it the most-watched video ever posted by Obama on his Facebook page, according to ABC News.
The post also garnered more than 210,000 reactions and was shared nearly 150,000 times.
"We will give him a family, and he will be our brother," Alex says in the video.
Alex also says he would share his toys with Daqneesh, invite him to birthday parties and hopes he will "teach us another language." He even says he will show Daqneesh how to ride a bike.
"The humanity that a young child can display who hasn't learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of other people because of how they look or where they're from or how they pray," Obama says in the video. "We can all learn from Alex."
