Amber Duke
President Donald Trump treated us with an absolute spectacle in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The leader of the free world hosted the president of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, as the United States plans to grant expedited refugee status to 59 white South Africans.
Afrikaners, a white minority group in South Africa, own the majority of the farmland in the country due to Apartheid-era laws, which have since been overturned. For years, the Afrikaners have spoken about having their farms raided or burned down and their people murdered and raped by black South Africans seeking vengeance. Ramaphosa signed a law in January allowing government seizure of farmland without compensation for purposes of equitable redistribution.
The South African majority party — along with U.S. Democrats and media outlets — has downplayed the racial targeting of white South Africans.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Trump asked his staff to dim the lights and proceeded to host a movie night with the South African president. He played a video comprised of clips of a South African minority party calling for the genocide of the Boers — a term referring to the minority whites in South Africa — and farmers as their supporters chanted along. A later clip showed a line of white crosses along a roadside that represent the lost lives of about a thousand white farmers.
After forcing Ramaphosa to watch the video, Trump sparred with NBC reporter Peter Alexander, who tried to change the subject to Qatari’s gifting of a jet to the president. Trump angrily shamed him for not wanting to talk about the plight of white South Africans. He held a stack of printed news articles about the vicious murders and attacks, holding up each one to the press as he described what happened to the story subjects.
“Death, death, horrible death,” he rattled off.
Trump then turned his ire to Ramaphosa, who condemned the chants heard in the video from the minority political party.
“What you saw, the speeches that were being made … one, that’s not government policy. We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves, political parties, to various policies,” Ramaphosa said.
Trump was undeterred.
“But you do allow them to take land,” he said, adding, “When they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they do, nothing happens to them. Nothing happens to them.”
“How do you explain that?” Trump demanded to know.
CNN cut away from the video Trump played during the meeting and numerous mainstream media outlets called the claims of genocide “false,” insisting that the murders weren’t as widespread as Trump claimed. Their reaction was reminiscent of ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz telling Vice President J.D. Vance, “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes,” in response to migrant gang takeovers in Aurora, Colorado.
Nonetheless, it was an important moment of Trump standing up to foreign leadership. This administration has been very clear that they won’t tolerate being taken for a ride, especially on their home turf.
It was just three months ago that Trump kicked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the Oval after a dust-up over U.S. aid and peace negotiations with Russia.
“You don’t have the cards,” Trump said at the time of Zelenskyy posturing and making demands.
“Have you said ‘thank you’ once?” Vance asked Zelenskyy.
Since then, Zelenskyy has played nice with the administration. Earlier this week, Trump held marathon phone calls with both Russia and Ukraine and has indicated both sides are more eager to reach an agreement.
Earlier in February ahead of the Zelenskyy meeting, Vance called out European leaders for mass censorship at the Munich Security Conference. He warned that political leadership had abandoned their values by depriving their citizens of free speech and religious liberty.
“But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard,” Vance said. “And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.”
Vance’s comments and the Zelenskyy meeting drew fire from the media and the establishment political classes, who were aghast that U.S. leaders would unashamedly advocate for western values and American interests on the world stage. But none have seemingly accepted that the alternative — namely, the prior four years with a president who was quite literally asleep at the wheel — led to a much less safe and stable world. As Vance said in his Munich speech, there is “a new sheriff in town” with President Trump and we’re all better off for it.