There’s been a lot of talk this week about Elon Musk’s “disappearance” from Washington. The theory being that Musk came to Washington, broke everything he touched, sowed chaos and left. I’ve hesitated to cover those stories because one thing about Musk is that he turns up like a bad, trapezoid-shaped penny when you least expect it. So it was on Wednesday, when Musk ended up in the Oval Office just in time to witness his absolutely bizarre handiwork. You see, Musk is South African. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa. His father owned emerald mines. Musk is absolutely behind the Trump administration’s obsession with South Africa’s nonexistent “white genocide.” This month, the Trump administration brought white South African faux-refugees into America to help them “escape” this “white genocide.” And wouldn’t you know, Trump’s Oval Office meeting with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa went poorly on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump had another contentious meeting with a world leader in the Oval Office, less than three months after shouting at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the same room. On Wednesday, May 21, Trump welcomed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and a coalition of his government officials to discuss, among other topics, the United States’ recent acceptance of White refugees from the African nation amid debunked allegations of white genocide.
Trump began the meeting by mildly insulting Ramaphosa, who took it in stride. “He is a man who is, certainly, in some circles, really respected,” Trump said. “Other circles, a little bit less respected, like all of us, in all fairness.”
“We’re all like that,” Ramaphosa laughed.
However, things got tense when a reporter asked Trump about his decision to admit 59 White South Africans into the United States as refugees earlier this month. Making false claims about a White genocide in the country, Trump said the refugees had fled South Africa “because of the violence and the racist laws.”
“I don’t know, all of these are articles over the last few days, death of people, death, death, death, horrible death,” Trump said. “This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What’s happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it.” He then produced paper copies of news articles and even dimmed the lights in the Oval Office to play video clips for Ramaphosa that he claimed supported his allegations, including footage of Black South Africans talking about shooting white people. Ramaphosa insisted that the actions displayed in the videos were “not government policy,” adding that, like all countries, South Africa suffers from violence between its citizens.
“There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only White people, majority of them are Black people,” Ramaphosa said, challenging Trump’s suggestion that White people are being disproportionately killed.
The South African government has repeatedly and vehemently denied allegations of White genocide, particularly against Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch and French settlers who ruled the country during apartheid.
I absolutely acknowledge that all of this is completely horrible, offensive and painful. But I started giggling at “This is sort of the opposite of apartheid.” Meaning what, exactly??? It’s about white people feeling uncomfortable, which is the opposite of apartheid, I guess. “I don’t like that Black South Africans have rights” = the opposite of apartheid. It is so utterly bizarre that the American government has been taken over by South African white-grievance politics. Anyway, this whole Trump ambush was just as abhorrent as what Trump and Vance did to President Zelenskyy. Trump is also too senile and too much of a p-ssy to spread his racist lies on his own – he gathered more than a dozen staffers (all white) to the Oval to try to intimidate Ramaphosa. It’s horrible.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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