“These are burial sites,” Trump said, pointing to his video of South Africa. “Over a thousand of white farmers.” His evidence, however, wasn’t real.
Ordinarily, Donald Trump isn’t the kind of guy who’s overly concerned with evidence. The president relies on preconceived ideas, assorted conspiracy theories, rumors he’s heard via conservative media and routine assumptions he creates out of whole cloth, but he’s never shown any real interest in concepts such as proof and substantiation.
But when he sat down with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Trump wanted to make a case against his guest’s home country, the Republican suddenly became deeply invested in evidence, holding a pile of printed articles that he offered as support for his baseless claims about South Africa. The American president even showed a video intended to bolster his “white genocide” conspiracy theories: It featured what Trump said were “burial sites” of “over 1,000” white farmers in South Africa.
But the evidence of racial persecution against white South Africans was not what Trump said it was. The New York Times reported:
A New York Times analysis found that the footage instead showed a memorial procession on Sept. 5, 2020, near Newcastle, South Africa. The event, according to a local news website, was for a white farming couple in the area who the police said had been murdered in late August of that year. The crosses were planted in the days ahead of the event and were later removed.
The Washington Post came to the same conclusion about the validity of the video shown in the Oval Office. (An NBC News report didn’t include a related analysis.)
“These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers,” Trump declared as if he were certain that his evidence was real.
He was plainly and demonstrably wrong. The American president didn’t just peddle conspiracy theories more commonly found on fringe websites, he also aired “video evidence” that he brazenly misrepresented.
