Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has revealed that President Trump was keen on granting persecuted, white South African farmers “asylum and citizenship” in a 2019 meeting, while Bolton was trying to convince the President to start a new war in the Middle East.
The buried comments come from Bolton’s new book describing a National Security Council meeting in response to Iran striking two pumping stations on a Saudi oil pipeline in May 2019:
When Dunford tried to get more specific on what we might do and when in response to an Iranian attack, Trump said the Gulf Arabs could pay. Dunford kept trying to get Trump to focus on specific options along a graduated ladder of possible responses, but somehow, we veered off to South Africa and what Trump was hearing about the treatment of white farmers, asserting he wanted to grant them asylum and citizenship. The discussion on targets then resumed, much of it to my satisfaction. Unfortunately, the mention of our remaining troop presence in Iraq led Trump to inquire, “Why don’t we take them out? In Syria, we got rid of ISIS.” What I heard next was shocking, but I distinctly remember hearing him say, “I don’t care if ISIS comes back into Iraq.”
While President Trump has championed U.S. farmers through tariffs and reversing China’s decades of economic exploitation, it’s evident that the persecution of white, South African farmers are also on his mind.
He tweeted about the issue in mid-2018, wanting to use the State Department and its resources to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers”:
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018
The South African government has seized white-owned farms in favor of expropriation without any form of compensation.
With actions like these, the post-apartheid government has given the go-ahead on the persecution of whites: there have been thousands of farm attacks, and hundreds of farm murders, since the early 1990s.
The Associated Press notes that the occurrence of farm murders are “higher than South Africa’s overall murder rate.”
South African politicians such as Julius Malema have doubled-down on such policies: “through land expropriation, we are forcing white people to share the land which was gained through a crime against the humanity of black and African people” and imploring followers to “cut the throat” of the “white man.” As a result, many white farmers live in fear: “We all know it’s coming. It’s just a question of when,” stated a farmer whose family was brutally slain in a farm murder.
To the mainstream media, Democrats, and progressive activists, the violence and harassment faced by these farmers is of no concern; in fact, addressing the well-documented expropriations and killings is deemed “racist.”
While Bolton is dead-set on derailing the Trump presidency – from inside and outside the administration – he unintentionally revealed yet another reason to support President Trump: South African farmers have long been a foreign policy issue brushed off by the establishment.
George W. Bush visited South Africa in 2003, presented with the chance to criticize then-President Thabo Mbeki’s support for Zimbabwe, a country which had pursued similar policies to the detriment of their economy, and instead praised him as a “point man” on the matter. And no prior president has even commented on the plight faced by these individuals.
It’s evident President Trump wants to reverse this sin of the foreign policy establishment and protect these persecuted farmers.
