White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clashed with an NBC News correspondent over whether a video displayed by Donald Trump in the Oval Office during a meeting with South Africa’s president contained evidence of a “genocide” against white people is taking place in South Africa.
During Thursday’s briefing, NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor pointed out to Leavitt that a video Trump forced South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to watch during their meeting did not, as the president claimed, show a “burial” site for South African farmers, but instead depicted white crosses meant to represent slain farmers.
Alcindor attemped to point out that the dozens of crosses displayed in the video shown at the White House were actually in honor of one slain couple, and were not representative of a real number of killings. Leavitt wasn’t having it.
“It’s unsubstantiated that that’s the case,” Alcindor told Leavitt.
“No, it’s true that–”, Leavitt said, looking momentarily confused before rejecting the reporter’s premise. “The video showed image of crosses in South Africa about white farmers that have been killed and politically persecuted because of the color of their skin.”
“Those crosses are representing their lives, and the fact that they are now dead, and the government did nothing about it,” an incensed Leavitt continued to talk over Alcindor as the NBC reporter responded with a follow-up, adding, “No, it did show that!” when Alcindor repeated that it did not show evidence of a mass burial site.
In 2024, eight murders of white farmers occurred in South Africa, according to data released by South African police and Afrikaner organizations compiled by Reuters. The deaths accounted for less than 1 percent of all murders in the country last year.
Trump met with South Africa’s president in the Oval Office on Wednesday in an effort to “reset” foreign relations, but the meeting quickly went off the rails. The US president asked for the lights to be dimmed, then showed video footage alleging that ethnic cleansing was taking place in South Africa. He insisted that “over 1,000” white farmers had been murdered, and that a genocide was taking place. No reputable international organizations that research and track ethnic conflicts and genocides support these conclusions.
“Look, here are burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump told Ramaphosa, pointing to the crosses Leavitt discussed on Thursday.
South Africa’s president repeatedly pressed his US counterpart to admit that white people were not persecuted in his country, pointing to white members of his delegation, such as golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen: “If there was a genocide, these three gentlemen would not be here.”
Critics of the narrative within South Africa, which is a majority Black country once ruled under a racist apartheid regime that treated Black South Africans as second-class citizens, argue that Afrikaner groups spreading the white genocide claims are in fact doing so with their own racist aims in mind. A court ruled in February that the group Boerelegioen was perpetuating such narratives in order to spread their own “messages of racial hatred and separation”.
