Just what is it with Oval Office encounters? Three months after his spat with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump is at it again. The US President ambushed a visiting Cyril Ramaphosa today, playing footage that appeared to show white South Africans being persecuted. Trump ordered aides to dim the lights and play a video showcasing what he called a ‘genocide’ of white farmers in the country.
Turning to Ramaphosa, his South African counterpart, Trump said people ‘were fleeing’ while demanding an ‘explanation’ for what he said was a ‘very sad situation’. ‘We have thousands of stories talking about it, we have documentaries, we have news stories… it has to be responded to,’ Trump said. Narrating over the footage, he continued:
These are burial sites right here, over a thousand of white farmers and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Those cars aren’t driving. They’re stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed, and it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it.
An uncomfortable Ramaphosa tried to turn away, as his host demanded that he continue watching the footage. Trump suggested a ‘genocide’ had been carried out against white Afrikaner farmers – something which Ramaphosa’s regime has strongly denied. After being shown the clips of what black South Africans making racist speeches and singing ‘kill the Boer’ about white people, Ramaphosa told Trump: ‘This is not government policy.’ But the Republican leader retorted:
You’re taking people’s land. And those people, in many cases, are being executed. They’re being executed and they happen to be white, and most of them happen to be farmers, and that’s a tough situation.
Well, at least Kyiv knows now that they’re not the only regime singled out for the bully pulpit treatment…
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