Another White House ambush sends a message to world leaders entering Donald Trump's den

Australia Broadcast Center

22-05-2025

It will be remembered as one of the great ambushes in the White House.
Beware a president with props. All he had to do was to order for the lights to be turned down.
But before that happened, for 20 minutes or so, Cyril Ramaphosa's visit to the Oval Office was going well.
Like any smart visitor to the Trump White House, the South African president came bearing a carefully considered gift and speaking soothing words.
Ramaphosa congratulated Trump on the renovations he'd made to the Oval Office. He thanked him for allowing the South African delegation to visit. He thanked him for allowing US officials to begin bilateral discussions on trade. He referred to "the work that you're doing to bring peace around the world".
Trump the renovator, Trump the facilitator, Trump the president in search of peace.
So far, so good.
Ever since the disastrous, acrimonious meeting in February between Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, world leaders have tread carefully upon entering this newly spruced up lion's den.
Things got ever better. Trump was clearly delighted when Ramaphosa declared to the crowded room that the gift he had brought was a book highlighting the best golf courses in South Africa. It was "a really fantastic book", he said. "It weighs 14 kilograms."
The perfect present for a president who spends much of his time playing golf, often on courses that he owns.
But the conversation began its descent into disaster when a journalist asked Trump what it would take to convince him a genocide was not taking place in South Africa.
Upon hearing the question, Ramaphosa did something few, if any, leaders have done before. He jumped in, saying he could answer for Trump.
A brave and unorthodox decision. Anyone who observes Trump's presidency knows that he does not like anyone answering on his behalf. He is not a man who lacks words or self-confidence.
Trump was clearly taken aback — would he admire Ramaphosa's chutzpah, or would it turn into "another Zelenskyy"?
It was a particularly precarious move given the sensitivity of the subject and the fact that the Trump White House had been running hard on the claim that the South African authorities are overseeing — or turning a blind eye to — such a genocide.
Only last week, the US accepted 59 white South Africans as refugees based on this narrative. That's despite Trump halting the arrivals of asylum seekers from most of the rest of the world.
What would it take to convince Trump there's no genocide? "It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans," Ramaphosa said.
Clearly, the South African was disputing the central claim. That alone was not the issue — the problem was that Ramaphosa had not learnt the lesson from Zelenskyy's car crash.
Ramaphosa would have been smarter to acknowledge that there was a problem (albeit not a genocide) and that this was one of the issues he wanted to talk to the president about in private — straight after this open session which, after all, is meant to be a photo opportunity.
It was at that point that Trump pulled the trigger — and so began the ambush.
"Turn the lights down," Trump ordered. "And just put this on."
When the commander-in-chief of the United States orders the lights to be turned down, they tend to be turned down, very quickly. The screen had been set up in advance and everything had been put in place for this video demonstration — a rare scene in the Oval Office, with the media still in the room.
And so began footage of some incendiary speeches, with Trump intervening ever so often with commentary.
The video featured an apartheid-era song called Kill the Boer, which means farmer or Afrikaner.
It then cut to footage that Trump claimed showed the graves of white farmers. "These are burial sites right here," he said.
It was excruciating — Ramaphosa and his delegation having to sit and watch, for 20 minutes or so, inflammatory rhetoric from rallies in South Africa. For much of the presentation Ramaphosa tried not to watch — and once or twice questioned the source of the material.
Ramaphosa: "Have they told you where that is, Mr president? I'd like to know where that is. Because this I've never seen."
Trump: "I mean, it's in South Africa, that's where."
Attempting to defend his country's record, Ramaphosa said the speeches shown did not reflect government policy. "We have a multi-party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves," he said.
As it turned out, some of the speakers were radical firebrands who were not part of the South African government.
Ramaphosa also argued that there was a crime problem in South Africa but that more Black people were killed than white people.
One of Trump's staff then handed him print-outs of 30 or so news articles detailing the killings of white farmers. He went through them one by one, some showing bloodied faces of what he said were murdered white farmers.
As he held them up for the cameras, Trump said: "Death. Death. Death. Horrible death. Death."
Standing in the room was Elon Musk, the South-African born businessman and adviser to Trump, who has accused Ramaphosa's government of having "openly racist ownership laws".
Trump made clear in the meeting that he believes that the South African government is seizing land — without compensation — from white farmers, and that it makes no effort to stop violence or incitement against these farmers. (The South African government has passed a law that theoretically could see land confiscated without compensation — but it hasn't been used that way.)
Once Ramaphosa realised he'd been ambushed, he fought to restore some civility. He also sought to answer Trump's central claim that the South African government was complicit in the persecution of white farmers.
Trump had raised race, so Ramaphosa quickly responded with race. He introduced his country's minister for agriculture — a white man — to answer the allegation.
Ramaphosa had also brought along two white golfers and a white billionaire businessman. Interestingly, Trump listened more intently — and without any interruption — to the billionaire and the two white golfers.
Ramaphosa and others in his delegation tried to argue that the issue was not black crime against whites — let alone genocide — but crime more generally.
Towards the end of the meeting, Trump appeared to take a step back from his claim in recent weeks of genocide.
Asked by a reporter whether he was sure genocide was occurring, he said: "I haven't made up my mind. I hate to see it, from the standpoint of South Africa, but also, you know, I'm trying to save lives."
He also said: "We have thousands of people that want to come into our country. They're also going to Australia in a smaller number." (Indeed, Australia has seen a steady increase in South African immigrants arrive on its shores.)
"But we have thousands of people that want to come into our country," Trump continued. "And they're white farmers, and they feel that they're going to die in South Africa."
Unlike Zelenskyy, Ramaphosa was not rushed without lunch, from the White House.
But after the Zelenskyy and Ramaphosa meetings, the message to world leaders is clear: you may come bearing gifts, but beware the president who orders the lights to be turned down.