Donald Trump’s ‘Pinch-Me Moment’ At The White House In A Meeting With Cyril Ramaphosa
The Oasis Reporters
May 23, 2025
An Ugly Scene In The Oval Office
By Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu (CNN)
Every day, Donald Trump produces another pinch-me moment.
He does all sorts of strange, extreme and possibly unconstitutional things.
But the spectacle of a US president sitting in the Oval Office and effectively defending the injustices of colonialism and apartheid was stunning even for him.
Trump dressed down South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday over a genocide of White farmers that does not exist, showing images of alleged atrocities that took place in other countries. His rant exemplified the extreme twist he’s engineered in US foreign policy. The circus, which saw the president dim the lights and play a misleading and conspiracy laden video, underscored his obsession with right-wing propaganda. Once again Trump’s imperviousness to facts was laid bare. And the latest Oval Office stunt – following the ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in February, posed the question of why world leaders would visit him and risk becoming a MAGA prop.
Among these leaders is the first American pope, Leo XIV, who received an invitation in a big White House envelope this week from Vice President JD Vance at the Vatican. He didn’t seem like he was in a rush to take it up.
Trump’s obsession with White South African farmers can be traced to the far-right fringes of the conservative media ecosystem. And by upbraiding a Black African leader he was sending signals to White nationalist elements in his coalition.
South Africa has serious problems, and the path away from its racist past has been treacherous and unfulfilled since Nelson Mandela’s triumphal presidential term. Corruption and mismanagement by African National Congress presidents have been partly to blame. The question of land ownership moreover is one of the most difficult issues the country must face. Most of the country’s farming land was confiscated from Black farmers in the colonial era, an injustice that was cemented by the apartheid years. Whites represent about 7% of the population but still control about 75% of the country’s arable farming land.
Trump implied that the Pretoria government was involved in evicting White farmers and killing them. “They’re being executed, and they happen to be White, and most of them happen to be farmers,” Trump said. “I don’t know how you explain that.”
This isn’t true, as Ramaphosa explained. While there have been killings and violence against White farmers, most people murdered in South Africa, which has long been plagued by violent crime, are Black. There is, however, controversy over a new law that allows the government to take land and redistribute it – with not compensation in some cases.
But it’s safe to say Trump did nothing to ease a fraught situation, despite getting another readout from South Africa’s White agriculture minister. He was more interested in talking to major champion golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen who’d been drafted in by the visiting delegation.
Trump has suspended refugee arrivals into the United States. He’s cancelled special protections for people from Haiti and Venezuela, meaning they must return to dangerous and violent homelands where they are at high risk. But he recently fast tracked the entry of a group of White Afrikaner refugees.
The implications are obvious, especially when Trump’s long history of racially charged comments and actions are taken into account.
The New York Times headline Friday morning had it about right: “Trump Casts Himself as Protector of Persecuted White People.”
From CNN’s Meanwhile In America
Video credit: BBC
