Trump Repeats “White Genocide” Falsehoods in Meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa

President Donald Trump staged an extraordinary confrontation in the Oval Office on Wednesday, repeating his false claims about a “white genocide” taking place in South Africa during a meeting with the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa. At one point, Trump had the lights dimmed and ordered video clips played showing people calling for violence against white farmers in South Africa. The ambush was the latest in the administration’s campaign to paint the South African government as racist against Afrikaners, the white minority that ruled the country during apartheid.
South African political economist Lebohang Pheko describes the Oval Office meeting as an “act of aggression” intended to shore up Trump’s racist base. Trump “seems to have a great appetite for these spurious white supremacist ideologies [because] they mirror his own extremely skewed worldview,” says Pheko.