In his Oval Office meeting Wednesday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, President Trump made allegations of persecution of White farmers in South Africa, which he used to justify granting refugee status to a group of Afrikaners earlier this month.
Ramaphosa has denied there is a genocide, and some Afrikaners say Mr. Trump is being lied to about a "White genocide" in the country.
In the last three months of 2024, 12 people were murdered on farms in South Africa, according to South African police. One was a White farmer, while the others were Black laborers or security workers, police said. Some estimates say in recent years there have been about 50 farm murders a year, but those do not specify race. The country had nearly 27,000 total murders last year, according to police data.
Mr. Trump played videos and held up articles during the White House meeting this week to support his unsubstantiated claims. But much of what he showed was being misrepresented. Here are three examples:
Mr. Trump held up a printed article from "American Thinker," a conservative online magazine, that included a screenshot, credited to Reuters, that the president said showed "all White farmers that are being buried."
But the video the screenshot was taken from was of humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters said. The footage was taken in February after deadly battles with a Rwanda-backed...
On May 19, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the Department of Justice’s launch of a sweeping Civil Rights Fraud Initiative designed to hold federal contractors, grant recipient...