A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was in the Oval Office yesterday.
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PRESIDENT CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: We are essentially here to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa.
MARTÍNEZ: But President Trump had a very different idea in mind. Here's NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: The conversation started off in a pretty friendly way, but the relationship between the two countries hasn't been this strained since apartheid. And when reporters started asking questions about it, that prompted President Trump to do something unusual.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Turn the lights down. Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you.
SHIVARAM: It was a four-minute video with clips of a South African leader from a minority party singing an apartheid-era song called "Kill The Boer," which translates to farmer. And Trump had a big stack of articles, too.
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TRUMP: Death. Death. Death. Horrible death.
SHIVARAM: Trump was trying to bolster his false claim that there's a, quote, "genocide" against white farmers going on in South Africa. It's a group of people he's welcomed to the U.S. as refugees, despite shutting out people from other countries. White people are a minority in South Africa, but they own a large majority of the farmland. Recent data from the end of 2024 shows that there were just 12...
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