Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump Goes Off The Rails In Uncomfortable Oval Office Meeting With South Africa

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes discuss Donald Trump's weird Oval Office meeting with the South African president. Photos courtesy of AP Photo Archive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Wednesday, President Trump welcomed South African President Cyril Romaphosa to the White House, and it did not go well. Let's watch a clip. Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you. Johan. This parliament can do. ...corial sites of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is across. and there's approximately a thousand of them.

They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers. Look, these are articles over the last few days. Death of people. Death, death, death, horrible death. I mean, I'll give these to you. So when you say, what would I like to do? I don't know what to do. Okay, let's unpack what we saw then.

So remember around the Trump Zelensky Oval Office meeting, there was a spirited debate, including on our show, POTSafe the World, about whether this was a setup by Trump or whether this meeting just kind of erupted. This one was clearly a setup. He had a video portion that he was ready to play for the president of South Africa. He had a bunch of papers printed out that were about this alleged white genocide. But let's unpack what was in the video. So it was really long.

It was like 10 minutes. Part of it was Trump playing clips of speeches from leaders of a party called the Economic Freedom Fighters or EFF party. This party was founded by a guy who left the president's party, Cyril Ramaphosa's party, the ANC. I think he left in like 2013. He is a – the speeches we saw were from political opponents of the current administration. It's a political party that draws from Marxist-Leninist philosophy. They want to nationalize major sectors of the economy. They want to expropriate land without compensation.

They embrace a more pan-African worldview. But again, South Africa has a multi-party system. The EFF got about 10% in the last election. That makes it like the fourth largest party. But I guess, Ben, Trump's view here is like black South African political leaders are must all be in the same coalition. Like that was kind of the suggestion there. Yeah, it was pretty clearly the suggestion there. And look, there's so many things that are wrong about this.

I'm just going to start with three. One, on the scale of human suffering in the world, like whatever is happening with white farmers in South Africa is in like the tens of thousands down the list, right? I mean, Trump has had Zelensky in the Oval Office who has people being killed on a regular basis and kids being kidnapped in the tens of thousands and brought into Russia.

and he yelled at him. Like now he's holding up like individual murders that have happened in South Africa as evidence of genocide. Trump had Bibi Netanyahu in the fucking Oval Office who's killed tens of thousands of not over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

You know, didn't raise that. Let me just put some numbers behind that. So it is quite clear and entirely cynical that at a time when there is a growing chorus of people calling out what they believe to be a genocide in Gaza that Trump is now talking about a white genocally. aside that is not coincidental. South Africa recorded 26,000 murders in 2024.

That's about 72 murders per day and a murder rate of 42 per 100,000 people, which is extremely high by global standards. The majority of victims are black South Africans, especially black men in cities. There were 32 farm murders in 2024, which is down from 50 in 2023. That's less than 1% of the total homicides in South Africa last year. But also those victims are black and white. So just to put some numbers behind, the scale of the crisis that we are talking about, it was 30 Sue murders in 2024 of farmers.

Yeah. I mean, so he doesn't care about what's happening in Gus. He doesn't care about what's happening in Sudan. He doesn't care about what's happening in Myanmar. Like a few dozen murders over the course of a couple of years, like really stirs his heart. That really is his second thing, Tommy, which is that, like, there have been this really dumb discussions and debates over the last decade about, like, whether or not Trump is a racist. He's a fucking racist.

I mean, like, this is a guy who kind of came to prominence saying the first black president was born in Africa. This is a guy who said that people from Africa were from shithole countries. This is a guy who I've never seen a television in the Oval Office. I didn't even know you could do that. It's like wheeling in a TV like it's like the 90s. Like a substitute teacher. Yeah, to confront a black African leader about what other black Africans who aren't even in his political party said at some rally. And so kind of let's put to.

rest, this notion that all of his racism is somehow coincidental to some other views he has. And then the last thing, which, again, I believe that with the kind of humanitarian, moral, and racialized concerns. But if we want to talk about foreign policy, this is absolutely devastating for the United States for a generation in Africa. I mean, this is the most important emerging continent in the world. Like half the world's young people are going to be in Africa by the middle of this century. South Africa is a big important country. They're part of the BRICS coalition.

There's an S at the end of BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Like, they are a leader in the African Union. If we care about all this stuff Trump says he cares about, like critical minerals and supply chains and raw materials and competing with China, humiliating and being a fucking racist to the president of South Africa and the Oval Office

is a good way of ensuring that the United States has absolutely no influence well. whatsoever in the continent of Africa for the rest of our lives. And that's what a fucking genius, you know, move by Trump, right? Like, just to appeal to some proud boys and Elon Musk and people like that in his coalition, he basically just ensure that the United States is not, is seen as a hostile, racist, white supremacist power for the foreseeable future. And probably is a favor to Bibi Netanyahu, because we should have mentioned that South Africa back in December of 2003 filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.

And now Trump is doing the I'm Rubber, your glue. Actually, you, Cyril Ramaphosa, are the one committing a genocide against these white-only demographics, these farmers. So it's entirely cynical. Ben, I was talking to some South Africa kind of like policy experts yesterday. Like Ramaphosa clearly tried to butter Trump up coming in. He was complimenting him about providing. South Africa with respirators during COVID.

He said he started practicing golf at Trump's encouragement. Ramaphosa also brought a white, I believe, agriculture minister, some white golfer from South Africa, a famous white businessman in South Africa, which to your point, again, is a very sad commentary on who the president of South Africa thinks can influence our president. It is not black people from South Africa. He had to bring this coterie of white people that he thought made. could get through to Trump. On the policy front then, like clearly Trump imposed a 31% reciprocal tariff on South Africa that is way above the 10% baseline and would be devastating for the South

African economy, which is dealing with extremely high poverty levels. That clearly was a key thing that Romaphosa wanted to talk about in this meeting. The other thing I imagine that he wanted to get some clarity on is whether or not Trump would attend the G20 in South Africa. Marco Rubio has been whining about it. He said he would not attend. He suggested he would cancel. It sounds like Trump may have committed, but I don't know if you saw that as a firm commitment or not.

I think Trump is going to have a hard time resisting being in the room with all those world leaders. He loves to be around world leaders, particularly if they feel like they need to kiss his ass to get out from under tariffs. And so, yes, like not only Rubio, Scott Bessent, right, supposed moderate, like didn't show up with the G20 finance ministers. to be clear for people, the G20 is the most important meeting that happens every year. Not the U.N., not the G7, where we're only talking to like a small number of people that tend to agree with us, although they don't with Trump. This is the place where you've got the major European powers, you've got China, you've got Russia, you know, you've got India, like the 20 biggest economies in the world, and usually a bunch of other countries are there. So be a pretty big own goal for the United States to, like, not show up at that meeting. Trump himself, I think, will want to be in the room for that meeting.

But look, I think one of the things that's going to be hard for people to understand during the, particularly the early Trump years, when leaders know that they have to deal with them for a while, is that yes, South Africa doesn't want to deal with these tariffs. They actually have a bunch of other kind of trade preferences that have been negotiated with the United States over the years that they don't want to see go away. So they will act like supplicans to Trump's face. That doesn't mean that they're also not furiously kind of reorienting their entire foreign and economic policy to get away from the United States. And so I think we're going to be in this mode where Trump's supporters, the kind of idiots online, will be like, look, you know, Trump, this leader complimented Trump, like, they respect us. No, that's a game.

Like, that's just for show. Like they come there and say, Mr. Trump this, Mr. Trump that. While behind the door, they're cutting deals with the Chinese. They're, like, probably forging new trade blocks in Africa. They're doing everything they can to be less dependent on the United States. And, like, that's what's going to happen here. And, yeah, the point about that they brought some white billionaire to, I mean, it just makes us look racist and ridiculous to the world, that you have to bring some white people into the Oval Office to tell the President of the United States that there's not a white genocide.

And Ramaphosa himself is a tycoon. I've met Ramaphosa. He's not like some rabble-rouser activist. This guy is literally from the tycoon side of the A&C. So this guy is like, and I guess who knows that? Everybody except Trump. Right. And it just makes us look ridiculous.

It really does. And yeah, I mean, so the G20, by the way, is November, in late November, in Johannesburg, South Africa. And it's just crazy that we still don't know if the United States is going to attend. I also believe I think the 2026 G20 is in the United States. So Romaphosa is trying to prepare this kind of like handoff of the leadership of this event, which you described as the most important. meeting of global leaders of the year and he doesn't know if Trump's going to come. It's Mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson. You know what's better than thinking about dinner

too hard? Not. Stop that. And just choose mushrooms. Five minutes. Done. Dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius. It's not magic. It's mushrooms. Stop stressing at mushroomcounsel.com. There was an interesting moment. They were talking about a bunch of global issues. They were talking about the war in Ukraine. Trump was talking about trying to get in touch with Zelensky. And apparently Zelensky at the time was in South Africa. And Trump goes, what the hell is he doing in South Africa? Like it was absurd for, you know, a leader to visit South Africa, which was incredibly insulting. But Ramaphosa, he tried to pivot it and say he was trying to impart some learnings from Nelson Mandela to Zelensky about making peace with your enemies, which I thought was kind of a profound and moving moment.

But it also, you know, it speaks to the point you were just making about how South Africa kind of charts its own course on foreign policy fairly often. And it does not seem like anything that happened in the Oval Office yesterday is going to bring us closer in agreement on much of anything. No. And we don't take like, you know, already, you know, Joe Biden didn't take them seriously enough, right? I mean, they have their own worldview informed by like a century of apartheid and the most successful, you know, decolonization movement of the late second half of the 20th century. Like there's plenty we could learn from South Africa. if we had any curiosity, but Trump is even curious. He just, he, like, he lives in this kind of white genocide world of Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk.

And that's all he cares. That's the only information he can absorb. Yeah. And it's worth reminding people that the Supreme Court just ruled that Trump can end temporary protected status for about 350,000 Venezuelans who are in the United States legally. The administration has moved to terminate temporary protected status for Haitians, Afghans and Cameroonians, and they have indefinitely suspended the refugee admissions program and stranded something like 22,000 refugees who had previously been approved to come to the United States.

So at a time when we are shutting down all efforts to welcome people from the countries I just mentioned to the United States, Trump is going out of his way to welcome these only white farmers from South Africa. The first tranche was like 59 people. Like that is his focus. Then there was one other weird moment in that involved, every moment of the, video was weird. But Trump was showing something that he believed to be a memorial to white farmers. It is called the White Cross monument. It's a memorial site along a highway in South Africa that commemorates the victims of attacks on rural farms. It's on private land. Apparently it was designed to raise

awareness around violence on farmers generally, especially white farmers. But the white painted metal crosses he showed there in that video symbolized both black and white farmers who have been killed. I believe There's like 3,000 total crosses. Some of them are arranged in a cross formation because it's a religious memorial. I guess it was established in 2004 and spearheaded by a woman whose parents were murdered in 2000. It was a little weird to me, Ben, that Ramaphosa was like, I don't know what that is. Can we get more information on it given that I think this memorial is part of the white genocide narrative that he knew Trump would bring up? But I don't know what you made of that.

Look, Ramaphosa is not the most in touch politician to begin with, right? Like I said, he's like a businessman. He was, you know, he was there at the end of the apartheid regime. He was a kind of a younger supporter negotiator for the ANC. But he's since made a lot of money and like mining and other things. And part of the critique on him is he's not exactly got his finger on the pulse of what's going on, you know, in all aspects of South African politics. That said, though, I mean,

it's just kind of embarrassing as an American that in order to like prepare for the meeting of the president of the United States, this guy is supposed to bone up on like conspiracy theories that like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson spread online. You know, like, like should you know about it? Yeah. It's going to be part of the briefing about the white genocide that like Trump is absorbed. But I just kind of hate that that this is something that like we even have to think about. There's so many things that the U.S. and South Africa need to talk about. That are not this. But you're right, though.

Elon Musk was in the Oval Office. He got a shout out. Clearly, he's whispering Trump's here on all of it. We have a quick clip. Elon is from South Africa. I don't want to get Elon involved. That's all I have to do. Get him into another thing.

But Elon happens to be from South Africa. This is what Elon wanted. He actually came here on a different subject, sending rockets to Mars. He likes that better. He likes that subject better. But Elon is from South Africa. I don't want to talk to him about that. I don't want to, I don't think it's fair to him.

Weird. Weird. There's just like a kind of big South African tech guy donor world that has become Maga. But I think Elon Musk left South Africa in the late 80s, so I'm not sure that he has his finger on the pulse either. The legacy of the kind of like segregationist settler colonial movement in South Africa is pretty powerful and widespread around the world, right? Because a lot of these people left, guess why they left? Because apartheid was ending. Like, because they're white supremacist that didn't like that the system was going to change. That's the kind of, you know, thing that led to the migration of people.

like Elon Musk to this country, to other places in the world, right? There's a big, weird South African community in New Zealand. Part of the reason why some of these tech bros build bunkers in New Zealand is because they get to hang out with the other apartheid legacy people there, right? So this is a subculture around the world that is like a pretty dark fucking subculture. And if you look at Elon Musk, Tommy, like, remember it was Tucker Carlson who was raising the white genocide stuff early on, like back when Tucker was on Fox News in the Trump, the first Trump term, as you reminded me, we had this conversation because Trump

saw something on Tucker Carlson. Well, when Tucker got shit-can by Fox, who hired Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, right? I mean, I'm not like sitting here with a conspiracy theory, like, these are like people looking out for each other who believe in things like white genocide in South Africa because that's the kind of intellectual legacy they come out of. They come out of an apartheid legacy. Yeah, it's very strange. Finally, we have talked a lot on POTS of the World, and on Pod Save America, about the government of Qatar gifting, air quotes, Donald Trump a 747-8. We learned yesterday from the Department of Defense that they are officially accepting that plane from the Gattari government that will be retrofitted and then given to Trump for his presidential library where he will absolutely not fly.

It will just be a monument. Trump was asked about this in the Oval Office. He got really, really mad about it at Peter Alexander, a great journalist from NBC News. and Ramaphosa mentioned it in passing in a way that I found to be kind of a funny dig, but I wonder what you thought. Let's watch a clip. So why did they give us a plane to the United States Air Force? That's what that idiot talks about after viewing a thing where thousands of people are dead. I'm sorry, I don't have a plane to give you.

I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plan, I would take it. Okay. So, Ben, I don't know if you could see Trump's face looked like it got noticeably red and angry after Ramaphosa made that dig. Clearly, his response to Peter Alexander there shows that he sees some political danger around this entire subject. Also, a reminder that we learned that it will cost between $745 million and a billion dollars to convert this plane from 747-8 to actual Air Force One replacement because you need communications that are secure, that can transmit. classified information that can be a part of the nuclear command infrastructure. You'll need

like missile defense, EMP shielding, a huge security sweep to check the whole thing for surveillance, make it work for a secret service. So this idea is stupid in every way. It's clearly a bribe. And Trump doesn't want to talk about it. Yeah. The two things we've learned just on top of that are it's interesting to me that it's still going forward. Right. And so like I kind of feel like the drama of the last couple weeks is like this thing gets floated, then it's out there. There's a lot of criticism, there's clearly political blowback. But the characteristic of the second Trump term is it doesn't matter. Like it's still going to happen, right? There's no gravity, right? Like Trump can absorb all that and just say like we're doing it anyway. But as you say, like his clear anger there

at a very good guy and reporter Peter Alexander shows like that he knows his vulnerability there, but he's still doing it. The Ramaphosa comment is really telling because, and not surprising, but it's like he's speaking for the entire world. The entire world is like, yeah, like whoever can give you a plane gets what they want. You know, like, that's what the world has learned about the second Trump term. And that's not a flattering comment. It's basically saying, like, you are for sale. We all know you're for sale. We don't happen to be sitting on top of a trillion dollars in gas reserves like Qatar, so we can't just give you like a jumbo jet like that. That's an incredibly damn in common about how America is perceived in 2020.

Yeah, I don't have a bribe for you, sir. I'm sorry. I wish I could grow. I don't have a bribe for you. Sorry, I don't have a big enough bribe for you. I got some white golfers. Pretty depressing. I got, you know, like Ernie Ells or some guy. Some dude, some guy with an accent. All right, I think that's it for us. Thank you for watching this Pod Save America YouTube exclusive. If you are not subscribed to Pod Save America on YouTube, please do the right wings kicking our ass on YouTube. People who search for political news are getting garbage from Incells and Ben Shapiro and TPP USA. And we are trying to remedy that by growing our presence on YouTube and you help us get good information into the algorithm. Also, if you want to hear a weekly show about the biggest things happening

in foreign policy and national security, not just in Washington, but all over the globe, check out the show Ben and I do every week. It's called Pod Save the World. You can listen to it as a podcast or you can subscribe to the Pod Save the World YouTube feed.