Topline
President Donald Trump insisted to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa Wednesday that white farmers in his country were being killed and their land seized, fueling a false narrative of a “genocide” in yet another extraordinary Oval Office showdown with a world leader.
President Donald Trump during a meeting with President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval … More
Key Facts
Trump spent several minutes playing clips of radical South African opposition party leader Julius Malema leading the anti-apartheid chant “Kill the Boer,” the Afrikaans word for farmer, and footage of what Trump claimed were “thousands” of graves of white South African farmers.
A South African court recently rejected claims of a white genocide in South Africa as “clearly imagined and not real,” and Ramaphosa’s administration has also said there’s no evidence to support the claim.
Ramaphosa said he wasn’t familiar with the alleged gravesites and South African “government policy is completely against what [Malema] was saying.”
He said he hoped Trump would “listen to the voices of South Africa” to understand the genocide claims are false.
Trump repeatedly exploded on reporters who asked about topics other than white South African farmers, calling an NBC reporter who questioned him about the plane the Qataris are expected to give his administration an “idiot,” a “jerk” and a “terrible reporter.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
