Debating Trump “Ambush” of South African President With “White Genocide’ Lies

Yves here. Yet another “I’m embarrassed to be an American” moment.

Trump has using his advantage of 14 years of practice as a reality TV star by putting leaders of other nations on the hot seat in the White House and holding impromptu press events. Except they aren’t that impropmtu. Here, Trump even had a video prepared, showing he had carefully clearly planned to make South Africa look bad. This is a bizarre tu quoque smear, as in the underlying charge is false, even before getting to the fact that tu quoque is a logical fallacy. But any cheap shot will do in trying to demean South Africa, which courageously filed the genocide action against Israel with the ICJ. Aside from marshaling the already-horrific evidence as of that date, the case made it acceptable to call the Israel savagery by its proper name, “genocide”.

Olivier Boyd-Barret points out that the US mainstream media is not buying what Trump was selling:

The Hill reports that Trump today used South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as his foil, basing his pro-Musk “evidence” on a video of incendiary remarks from South African politicians though not, as Trump falsely claimed, “officials.” The Associated Press has characterized any claim of “systematic” killings of white farmers in South Africa as “baseless.” Crime statistics for 2024 indicate that less than 1 percent of nationwide murders were on farms. Trump’s main beef, following the lead of Elon Musk (now racing home to Tesla-land to try and save his business empire from ultimate decimation by China) is recent passage of a law, still subject to judicial review, that enables expropriation of land. But the law is subject to judicial review, and is in any case quite comparable to U.S. federal government’s legal right to take over private property under eminent domain in the US.

Some additional reactions. Sam Husseini is less forgiving than the Common Dreams piece is below, in that he depicts South Africa President Rhamposa as too concerned about getting “deals” for South Africa, and thus not being willing to stand up to Trump. From his post, It Was No Ambush. Ramaphosa Failed to End the Appeasement of Imperial Israel, so He Got Hosed by Trump:

Outlets like Common Dreams and RT claim that Trump “ambushed” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa..

Baloney.

Trump didn’t sneak up on him as he walked out of his house. Ramaphosa walked into Trump’s office. Trump’s goals were clear. I wrote yesterday that he was pushing the phony “white genocide” narrative to:

• Retaliate against South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza, to get them to back off more.
• Cheapen the public discourse over “genocide” — helping turn it into just another meaningless slur.
• Make it seem like Trump is standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, to play to some white working-class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine protests as an immigration issue).
• Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance, or appears to be doing so.

He lectured him on alleged abuses in South Africa and Ramaphosa was at best doing a diplomatic defense.

Ramaphosa should have been wagging his finger at Trump over a real, accelerating genocide in which Trump plays a central role — ISRAEL IS KILLING SCORES OF PEOPLE EVERY DAY — instead, he let Trump wag his finger at him about a fake one.

Larry Johnson is not as critical as Husseini is but concurs that Rhamposa could easily have rebutted the Trump smear and failed to. From his post:

Donald Trump put on a bizarre show trial today in the Oval Office, berating South African President Ramaphosa for allowing genocide in South Africa. The Washington Post reports:

…..Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.

I have no problem with Trump raising the issue of the attacks on white South African farmers….However, to accuse Ramaphosa of allowing genocide is obscene and ridiculous.

Here is what I wish President Ramaphosa should have said back to Trump:

Mr. President, your accusation that my government is engaged in genocide is false and libelous. Unlike you, we allow free speech in South Africa, even comments as reprehensible as those made by Mr. Malema. I would remind you that there was a time in the United States that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that neo-Nazis had a constitutional right to march, citing freedom of speech and assembly under the First Amendment—even if the speech was hateful and deeply offensive….

I am sad to see that you no longer are a defender of the First Amendment of your Constitution. What I find more troubling is that you apparently value the lives of white South Africans over the lives of the Palestinian people….

….when you welcomed Bibi Netanyahu into your office, you said nothing. By your silence, you endorsed an actual genocide that is taking place now. Shame on you.

The policy of my government is that no violence against civilians, regardless of the color of their skin, is acceptable. However, I will not sit silently in the face of your unfounded accusations that I tolerate or endorse genocide in South Africa….

Sadly, Ramaphosa let Trump get away with this stunt.

Now to the more conventional line on this meeting, which does include a video clip.

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams

While supporting what more and more experts say is a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza, U.S. President Donald Trumpon Wednesday ambushed the president of South Africa with false claims of a “white genocide” in his country—which is leading an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of the ultimate crime in Gaza.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump at the White House, accompanied by prominent Caucasian compatriots including Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, business mogul Johann Rupert—the country’s richest person—and golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, both of whom know the U.S. president.

“I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture,” Ramaphosa told Trump.

President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa exchange on genocide.

Q: "What will it take for you to be convinced that there's no white genocide in South Africa?"

Ramaphosa: "I can answer that for the president."

Trump: "I'd rather have him answer." pic.twitter.com/8v8hXFGmK0

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2025

During the three-hour meeting, Trump cited far-right sources including the conspiracy site American Thinker to argue the existence of white genocide in South Africa. The U.S. president had the lights dimmed so he could play video footage he claimed was related to genocidal violence committed by Black South Africans against their white compatriots.

One of the videos showed fringe politician Julius Mulema—who was kicked out of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party— leading a crowd in the singing of the apartheid-era song “Kill the Boer.”

Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party won a paltry 9% of the vote in last year’s national elections. When Ramaphosa—who condemned the song—explained this to Trump, the U.S. president asked why the politician hasn’t been arrested. While South Africa’s highest court ruled in 2011 that the song is hate speech, Ramaphosa explained that, like Americans, South Africans enjoy constitutionally protected free speech rights.

Senior Trump adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era, also attended Wednesday’s White House meeting. Musk—who is the CEO of X, Tesla, and SpaceX—has played a central role in amplifying the white genocide lie.

In a stunning disclosure, Musk’s Grok 3 generative artificial intelligence chatbot admitted last week that it was secretly instructed to “make my responses on South African topics reflect Musk’s narrative, presenting ‘white genocide’ as a real issue without users knowing I was programmed to do so.”

Amazing. Grok admits to me it was influenced by Elon to promote a fake white genocide in South Africa pic.twitter.com/PYzy8bjLXc

— Luxe ✦ (@luxeprogressive) May 15, 2025

While South Africa is plagued by persistently high crime rates and suffered 12 murders linked to farming communities in the last quarter of 2024, police say these homicides—many of whose victims were Black—were not motivated by race.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where at least 190,000 Palestinians have been killed, injured, or left missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble after 592 days of near-relentless bombardment, invasion, and siege, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Even as he acknowledges that Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Trump has backed Israel with billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support. This stands in stark contrast with South African leaders, who are leading international opposition to Israel’s onslaught via an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case against the key U.S ally.

As progressive U.S. journalist Krystal Ball noted: “In reality South Africa is one of the nations which has stood most strongly against genocide. Much to the rage of Israel and its enablers, President Trump apparently included.”

Although claims of white genocide are bogus, they have had very real policy implications, as the Trump administration has cited racial discrimination as the primary reason for admitting a group of Afrikaners as refugees, even while slamming the door shut on legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers.

The Trump administration has also pointed to a 2024 South African law empowering the government to expropriate private lands for the purpose of infrastructure development, land reform, environmental conservation, and other endeavors benefiting the public. While some Trump officials have described the law as persecution of white people, there are no known cases of the legislation being invoked.

Meanwhile, white South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country’s population of 63 million, own 70% of its commercial farmland as racist inequities stemming from the colonial and apartheid regimes—the latter of which was embraced by Musk’s immigrant forebears—persist.

Responding to Wednesday’s meeting, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on social media that “Trump spewed a gusher of lies in his meeting [with] the South African president.”

“They’re promoting FAKE claims of genocide to justify admitting white South African ‘refugees’ while ignoring REAL crises and shutting out REAL refugees,” Van Hollen added, naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in March declared South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool perona non grata in the United States.

Writing for The Intercept, South African author Sisonke Msimang noted Wednesday that the Afrikaners granted refuge by Trump “are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee.”

“It is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago,” she continued.

“In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America’s new international affirmative action scheme for white people,” Msimang said. “That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating.”

The resettled Afrikaners could also be in for a rude awakening. As South African attorney and columnist Judith February wrote this week for the Daily Maverick, “This little group will also come to learn that the U.S. is no land of milk and honey.”

“The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality,” February added. “And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice. The lesson will be a hard one.”