In a controversial turn during a diplomatic meeting at the White House on Wednesday, former U.S. President Donald Trump presented what he claimed was evidence of a “White genocide” in South Africa — only to have it quickly debunked as footage from a humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Trump, speaking to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, held up a printed screenshot from a Reuters video and claimed it showed White South African farmers being buried after mass killings. “These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump stated, pointing to the image during the televised meeting.
However, the image — originally filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty — was taken in Goma, DRC, and showed humanitarian workers conducting a mass burial following an M23 rebel attack. The footage had nothing to do with South Africa. Reuters confirmed the image’s origin, and Katanty expressed shock at the misrepresentation, saying, “President Trump used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people.”
The photo appeared in a blog post published by the conservative outlet American Thinker, which made general references to unrest in South Africa and the Congo but did not claim the image was from South Africa. The post’s author, Andrea Widburg, later admitted Trump had “misidentified the image” but defended the article’s broader message about what she...
The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Rural Crimes Investigative Unit (RCIU) and the Livestock and Farm Protection Task Force are aware of the false statement made last week regarding New World Scre...