President Donald Trump on Wednesday had an awkward and at times combative first Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, pushing unsubstantiated claims of white genocide in South Africa.
“We have thousands of stories talking about death,” Trump said during the meeting, accusing Ramaphosa of allowing people to “take land” from white Afrikaners and kill them.
At times arguing with Ramaphosa in a way that was reminiscent of his combative late-February meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump kept pressing false claims, spread by top adviser Elon Musk, that white Afrikaner farmers — the descendants of mainly Dutch colonists — have faced genocide.
In a particularly bizarre moment, Trump ambushed Ramaphosa and played a long video of extremist leaders in South Africa, such as Julius Malema, calling for violence against white Afrikaners. The video also depicted, in Trump’s words, “burial sites.”
Ramaphosa and several of his advisers pushed back on the video, questioning where the burial site imagery came from, and telling Trump that the violent language doesn’t reflect government policies. They also repeatedly stressed that violence against South African farmers does not happen to just whites.
“We have too many deaths. But it’s across the board,” one of the South African advisers said. “It’s not only farmers.”
“If you go into the rural areas where the Black majority are, you would see women, elderly, being raped, being killed,” another told Trump. “The problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it is about crime.”
Throughout the meeting, Trump also kept attacking NBC News’ Peter Alexander, calling him a “jerk” for questioning Trump about giving white Afrikaners refugee status and accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar.
