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Donald Trump did another of his little “Let’s ambush a foreign country’s leader” shitshows today, welcoming South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the Oval Office so he could spring a bunch of lies about the nonexistent “genocide” of white farmers in South Africa.
The meeting began cordially enough, with Ramaphosa somehow keeping a straight face as he flattered Trump about his business acumen and the prospects for trade between the two countries. Ramaphosa even brought a long a contingent of great South African golfers to try to impress Trump. He should have known better, honestly. Things quickly went south — past the Cape of Good Hope, even — when a reporter asked what it would take for Trump to be convinced that there isn’t any “white genocide” in South Africa.
Ramaphosa tried explaining that Trump would only need to listen to the actual South African government officials — and the white golfers, too — to understand that he’s mistaken, but Trump had an ambush set up. Claiming that he had lots of “documentaries” to support the bullshit genocide claim, Trump asked for the lights to be dimmed so Trump could share a clip of undated videos showing Black South African politicians who aren’t part of the government saying terrible things about driving white farmers off their lands. Another clip showed someone singing the radical song “Kill the Boer,” which is actually banned in South Africa.
As the New York Times explains,
The video played in the Oval Office meeting featured the utterances and slogans of Julius Malema, a firebrand opposition politician who has made land expropriation without compensation his campaign message. Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, was expelled from the African National Congress over a decade ago, and the ANC distanced itself years ago from the chant he cites, “Kill the Boer.”
Well hey, Malema is Black and from South Africa, so clearly he and Ramaphosa agree on everything.
That was followed by what Trump claimed was video showing over a thousand “burial sites” in South Africa, with aerial footage of a long procession of vehicles moving in one lane of traffic between rows of white crosses. Trump lied that each cross marked the grave of a white farmer or murdered family member.
Prior to this excerpt, Trump claimed that the video showed
“burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to show love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things that you see is a cross, and there’s approximately a thousand of ‘em, they’re all white farmers, the family of white farmers, and those cars aren’t driving, they’re stopped to pay respects to their family who were killed. […] Both sides of the road you have crosses.”
Trump didn’t bother offering any details about where the video came from, because look right there, crosses and cars, those are graves. Ramaphosa said, “I’d like to know where that is, because this, I’ve never seen,” and Trump replied, as if he were explaining to a complete fool, “It’s in South Africa,” settling the question once and for all.
We haven’t seen any specific debunking that’s identified the real source of the video — give it a day or two, by which time the 1,000 graves will be unassailable rightwing canon anyway — but it certainly looks similar to some video we’ve seen of protests in which highways were blockaded in 2017 to protest killings at farms, at which time about 71 farmers had died. Not 1,000, then or since. Since the killings were part of a rural robbery and murder wave, one academic told Al Jazeera that some 30 percent of those murdered were Black farm workers.
This is where we also point out that The Source Of All Knowledge puts the total of all farm murders in South Africa (Black and white victims) at 806, from 2010 through August 2023, although Afrikaner groups insist the numbers must be higher. In any case, nobody has ever claimed that the bodies are all buried in that one place, wherever that video is from.
UPDATE: I found the source of the video. It was a protest in response to the murder of a farm couple, Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were killed during a botched robbery of their farm in 2020. Nothing I can find suggests that they were targeted for being white; the robbers broke into their home to get at the safe, couldn’t open it, and waited for them to return home. After ambushing and shooting them, the murderers stole their car and some home items. Horrible, but not anything at all close to what Trump said about the video. (Video’s music is meant to be dramatic, but ick.)
Fortunately Trump found an American journalist to blow up at, so that made it all better. After the video ended, NBC reporter Peter Alexander asked a question about Trump’s formal acceptance of the Qatari castoff 747, giving Trump a chance to go nuclear, because how dare you interrupt Trump’s solemn white genocide propaganda moment?
TRUMP: What are you talking about? You know, what are you talking about? You know, you’re oughta get out of here. What does this have to do with the Qatar jet?
They’re giving the United States Air Force a jet, OK? And it’s a great thing. We’re talking about a lot of other things. Just NBC trying to get off the subject of what you just saw.
You know, you’re a terrible reporter. Number one, you don’t have what it takes to be a reporter. You’re not smart enough.
But for you to go into a subject about a jet that was given to the United States Air Force, which is a very nice thing. They also gave $5.1 trillion investment in addition to the jet. [LOLOL 5.1 TRILLION? Fuck off. –Ed.] You oughta go back to your studio at NBC, because Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they oughta be investigated. They are so terrible, the way you run that network. And you’re a disgrace. No more questions from you!
Seriously. Trump wanted to have a simple, dignified shaming of a foreign leader over dishonest propaganda lies, and Alexander ruined it. But soon enough, Trump was right back to muttering “death, death, death” and perseverating about decapitated farmers, so he was in his happy place again.
Also, Ramaphosa did manage to get his own little dig in at one point when he pretended to apologize for not having his own plane to give Trump, and Trump didn’t seem to notice it was a joke.
RAMAPHOSA: I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you
TRUMP: I wish you did. I’d take it. If your country offered the US Air Force a plane, I would take it
RAMAPHOSA: Okay
The end.
OPEN THREAD.
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