'Debunked': Rapid-fire CNN fact check quashes Trump’s new oval office claim

21 May

U.S. President Donald Trump shows alleged news reports as he meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

CNN ‘Inside Politics’ dismantled President Donald Trump’s recent claim of wide-scale white genocide in South Africa using some of Trump’s own information to shred it.

The fact-check was a response to the president pouncing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa today with allegations of what he claims to be a nation’s war on white farmers and landowners.

“This is very bad,” Trump told Ramaphosa, while referencing a video the White House posted on X. “These are burial sites right here … over a thousand of white farmers and those cars are lined up to pay love on Sunday morning, each one of those white things you see are a cross. There’s approximately a thousand of them, they’re all white farmers.”

Ramaphosa disputed the alleged burial sites in the video, saying “I’d like to know where that is. Because this I’ve never seen.”

CNN host Dana Bash turned to senior reporter Daniel Dale, who quickly pushed hard into details.

“In the last nine months of 2024 in South Africa [there were] 19,696 murders,” said Dale. “How many of them occurred on farms? Thirty-six, about 0.2 percent. That includes employees like security staff and farm workers. How many of them were actual farmers? Seven out of more than 19,000—and it's not even clear that those are all white farmers. Contrary to what the president said, many farmers in South Africa are Black. Even the white ones who have been victims of crime, it's not clear if they’ve been targeted for racial reasons.”

Experts and white South African farmers themselves have repeatedly told media outlets and think tanks that they feel they are more often targeted for robbery and low-level money crimes rather than race, primarily because they are geographically isolated and vulnerable.

“So, that is bad, but that is not genocide,” said Dale. “And you know who else was skeptical of the genocide narrative, Dana? The Trump administration in 2020.”

According to Dale, Trump’s first administration shared a report revealing claims of racial violence to be more attributed to the country's “high and growing crime rate,” based on information from the Institute for Security Studies.

“This genocide claim … I think it is clearly undermined, debunked by the facts we have available,” Dale said.

Watch the video below, or by clicking here.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

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