In an astonishing ambush, President Trump dimmed the lights in the Oval Office on Wednesday during a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and showed what he said was video evidence of racial persecution of white South Africans.
The meeting started with pleasantries and discussions about golf and foreign policy, with the leaders at first seeming to glide over the issue of the fringe narrative that Mr. Trump has amplified, claiming that there was a genocide of white South Africans.
But the meeting took a turn when a journalist asked a what it would take for Mr. Trump to change his mind that there was no “white genocide” in South Africa.
Mr. Ramaphosa said that “it will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans.”
The clash in the Oval Office centered on Mr. Trump’s insistence on false claims of land seizures and mass killings of white Afrikaners, members of a white ethnic minority group who ruled during the country’s apartheid era.
During the event, Mr. Trump largely dismissed Mr. Ramaphosa’s attempt to describe the situation in his own country.
Instead, Mr. Trump had at the ready a packet of printed articles that he said demonstrated the “thousands” of stories of racial persecution in the country, and cued up a video to make his case.
At least one of the scenes on the screen appeared to be the rallying cry of “Kill the Boer,” which U.S. officials and Afrikaner activists have cited as evidence that white South Africans are being persecuted. Boer means farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans. The ruling party of South Africa, however, the African National Congress, distanced itself from the chant, which was popularized by the leader of another political party, years ago.
“We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves,” Mr. Ramaphosa told Mr. Trump. “Our government policy is completely against what he was saying.”
By the end, with the stunned South African president looking on, Mr. Trump began flipping through his printouts repeating, “Death, death, death.”
There have been killings of white South Africans, but police statistics show they are not killed at a higher rate than other South Africans. And while the South African government did pass a law permitting the government to take land without compensation, the process is subject to judicial review.
The South African delegation continued to try to explain to Trump the situation on the ground in South Africa, but he remained unmoved. “Dead white people, dead white farmers,” he said.
Mr. Trump narrated one of the scenes, which he said were “burial sites of more than 1,000 white farmers” whose loved ones cars lined up on Sunday mornings to visit their graves. “It’s a terrible sight,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mr. Ramaphosa turned to look at the screen as Mr. Trump narrated, and then questioned the location of the scenes in the video, saying he didn’t recognize them as in South Africa.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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