Karoline Leavitt will get fiery and doubles down after press questions alleged ‘white genocide’ in South Africa | EUROtoday

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clashed with an NBC News correspondent over whether or not a video displayed by Donald Trump within the Oval Office throughout a gathering with South Africa’s president contained proof of a “genocide” towards white folks is happening in South Africa.

During Thursday’s briefing, NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor identified to Leavitt {that a} video Trump compelled South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to look at throughout their assembly didn’t, because the president claimed, present a “burial” website for South African farmers, however as an alternative depicted white crosses meant to signify slain farmers.

Alcindor attemped to level out that the handfuls of crosses displayed within the video proven on the White House had been really in honor of 1 slain couple, and weren’t consultant of an actual variety of killings. Leavitt wasn’t having it.

“It’s unsubstantiated that that’s the case,” Alcindor advised Leavitt.

“No, it’s true that–”, Leavitt stated, trying momentarily confused earlier than 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 speak over Alcindor because the NBC reporter responded with a follow-up, including, “No, it did show that!” when Alcindor repeated that it didn’t present proof of a mass burial website.

In 2024, eight murders of white farmers occurred in South Africa, in accordance with information launched by South African police and Afrikaner organizations compiled by Reuters. The deaths accounted for lower than 1 % of all murders within the nation final yr.

Trump met with South Africa’s president within the Oval Office on Wednesday in an effort to “reset” overseas relations, however the assembly rapidly went off the rails. The US president requested for the lights to be dimmed, then confirmed video footage alleging that ethnic cleaning was happening in South Africa. He insisted that “over 1,000” white farmers had been murdered, and {that a} genocide was happening. No respected worldwide organizations that analysis and monitor ethnic conflicts and genocides assist these conclusions.

“Look, here are burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried,” Trump advised Ramaphosa, pointing to the crosses Leavitt mentioned on Thursday.

“Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and there’s approximately 1,000 of them. They’re all white farmers. The family of white farmers,” stated the US president. “It’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A White House official later insisted to The Independent that “[t]here is extensive evidence of the persecution of white farmers” in South Africa, with essentially the most related proof supposedly being the testimonials of a number of dozen white South Africans dropped at the US by the Trump administration as a part of a refugee program.

South Africa’s president repeatedly pressed his US counterpart to confess that white folks weren’t persecuted in his nation, pointing to white members of his delegation, equivalent to 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”.