This claim is false — there is no evidence of large-scale targeted killings of white farmers anywhere in South Africa.
The Anti-Defamation League released a blistering statement about Trump's comments, which he appears to have tweeted after watching a conspiratorial Fox News segment.
"It is extremely disturbing that the President of the United States echoed a longstanding and false white supremacist claim that South Africa’s white farmers are targets of large-scale, racially-motivated killings by South Africa’s black majority," the group said.
The ADL explained how Trump's claims are actually part of a long-standing effort by white supremacists to falsely paint white people as victims of genocide.
White supremacists in the United States have made such claims for years. In early 2012, ADL’s Center on Extremism documented how white supremacists in the United States were gearing up for protests as part of something they termed the “South Africa Project (SAP).” The goal of the organizers, which included representatives from major neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, "traditional white supremacist," Christian Identity groups, as well as racist prison gangs, was to stop the alleged ‘genocide of Whites’ in South Africa. The protests originated in 2011 at the hands of Monica Stone, a long-time member of the Louisiana-based white supremacist Christian Defense League and immigrant from South Africa.
Prominent American white supremacist Richard Spencer has used the South Africa talking point as recently as this March.
The ADL ended with a damning indictment of Trump's racist remarks.
"We would hope that the President would try to understand the facts and realities of the situation in South Africa, rather than repeat disturbing, racially divisive talking points used most frequently by white supremacists," the ADL concluded.
