President Donald Trump launched into a full-blown rant after blasting a reporter for asking a “nasty” question about his decision to welcome white South Africans as refugees.
Aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump was pressed on his decision to grant refugee status to members of South Africa’s Afrikaner community, claiming without evidence that they were victims of “genocide.”
The U.S. funded a charter flight for dozens of Afrikaners—a white ethnic minority group in South Africa descended from mainly Dutch colonists—even as the Trump administration barred many other refugee admissions.
Doubling down on his genocide claims, Trump declared that South Africa was “out of control” and accused the media of turning a blind eye.
“And it’s been out of control for a long time, and the media doesn’t report it,” Trump said.
“I think if I see people in distress, I don’t care what color, what they look like, what anything—their size, their height, their eyes. I don’t care,” he told the press, insisting his decision wasn’t based on race.
“But I think that, from all evidence, the farmers in South Africa are being treated brutally. And it’s been reported, and nobody wants to cover it,” Trump continued.
“But they happen to be white. And if they were Black, I’d do the exact same thing. And we treat people very well when we see there’s a genocide going on,” he said. “So if it’s a genocide, that’s terrible. And I happen to believe it could very well be.”
Trump then tore into the reporter who asked the question, branding it as “nasty.”
“And I’m not looking for reporting because, believe me, it’s easier for me not to do anything. It’s a lot easier because I don’t get nasty questions like that,” the president said.
“But the fact is that we’re about saving lives, and we’re gonna do that. So we’ve made a home, and we’ll make a home for other people that are treated badly, no matter what their color.”
South African officials have accused the Trump administration of having ulterior political motives for granting the group refugee status. Trump has denounced South Africa for its relationship with Iran and taking Israel to the International Court of Justice over the Gaza conflict, The New York Times reported.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” Chrispin Phiri, a spokesman for the South African government, told the newspaper in a statement.
Meanwhile, Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa during the final years of apartheid, as well as his AI chatbot Grok, have come under fire for also promoting the claim that Afrikaners are victims of genocide.
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