US President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of what he falsely presented in the Oval Office on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of White South Africans.
“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In fact, the video published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by its fact check team showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from footage of a mass burial following an M23 rebel assault on Goma, filmed by video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.
The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by "American Thinker", a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo.
The post did not caption the image but identified it as a “YouTube screen grab” with a link to a video news report about Congo on YouTube, which credited Reuters.
Andrea Widburg, managing editor at "American Thinker" and the author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had “misidentified the image”.
Trump shows photo from the DRC as proof of ‘White genocide’ in South Africa
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Widburg...
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