South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tried to put a brave face on his meetings with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, though he appeared to admit he made little headway, even in a private meeting.
Ramaphosa and his delegation attempted to counter Trump in a televised Oval Office meeting over his claims about South Africa’s treatment of white farmers, using three white participants as evidence that there was no “genocide.”
Trump then responded by playing a video showing incendiary, racist and violent rhetoric by South African political figures, such as Julius Malema. He also showed a memorial to victims of farm murders.
The South African team was taken by surprise and quickly found itself on the back foot. South African golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen corroborated some of Trump’s concerns about farm attacks and violent crime in general.
The day before, Ramaphosa had told reporters that he wanted to reach “a really good trade deal” with Trump. But the South African team had not offered any compromises, and evidently saw the primary purpose of their visit as correcting Trump’s “misinformation.”
At the end of the day, speaking to a press conference, Ramaphosa appeared to admit that his team had not been properly briefed. He blamed the fact that some members of his delegation had “just arrived today, or late last night.”
As for the private meeting that the delegation had with Trump after the Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa said that it had been cordial. However, from his description, it seemed to have been quite superficial as well.
“Following that engagement which you all witnessed, we retired to what I think they call the Cabinet room, where we were able to have really good in-depth exchanges with President Trump and his other officials. The discussion revolved, of course, around golf, but they also revolved around issues of trade and investment,” he said.
Ramaphosa did claim one victory: he said that Trump had moved off his refusal to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in November. South Africa currently heads the G20 and passes the presidency to the United States later this year.
Trump implied that his attendance would depend on reform in South Africa, but did back away from an outright refusal to attend, which had been the administration’s previous stance.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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