Conservative journalist David Weigel, who writes for Semafor, was stunned by President Donald Trump's willingness to believe right-wing talking points about "white genocide" in South Africa.
Weigel appeared as part of the panel on CNN's State of the Union on Tuesday, where Manu Raju played a clip of Trump defending his decision to grant refugee status to Afrikaner farmers.
"They happen to be white. But whether they're white or Black, makes no difference to me," Trump said Monday. "But white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated."
Raju added, "President Trump went so far as to say there's a genocide taking place, although there's no evidence of that."
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"Twenty years ago, there was this idea on the right that when Nelson Mandela died, there would be some sort of white genocide — literal genocide of people being killed in the streets — was very prevalent on the far right online," Weigel said. "This was not dreamed of that the president would be taking status away from Haitians, from other people who've been let in the country and giving it to white South Africans."
"This is a president who's not going to run again, who's very comfortable doing something that would engender a backlash and undoes decades of American foreign policy toward South Africa," Weigel continued. "This is an enormous shift from — remember, he ran on bringing Juneteenth in, making it a holiday in 2020. That's not how he's governing right now. He's very comfortable saying some Americans assimilate better, and saying in the same sentence that, yes, they happen to be white."
Also Monday, the administration announced that it was ending its refugee program for thousands of displaced people from war-torn Afghanistan.
The New Yorker's Susan Glasser said she was "struck by the timing" of allowing white Afrikaners into the U.S. on the same day the Trump administration revoked temporary protected status for Afghans "who assisted the American two-decade-long presence in Afghanistan, either working with the U.S. military, working with nonprofit groups."
Glasser continued, "These are people, in many cases, who may now face the risk of being sent back to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, their lives being placed at risk. We guaranteed their safety."