President Donald Trump has allowed a small group of White South African farmers, who have faced severe persecution in their home nation, to come to the United States as refugees, and it has set off a firestorm of racism accusations.
Chief among them was MSNBC reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who had an on-air meltdown after her network played the president’s answer as to the reason he was allowing the refugees in.
“Because they’re being killed, and we don’t want to see people be killed,” he said to the reporter who asked him the question at the press conference. “Now, South Africa leadership is coming to see me, I understand, sometime next week. And you know, we’re supposed to have a—I guess a G20 meeting there or something. But we’re having a G20 meeting. I don’t know how we can go unless that situation’s taken care of.”
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about, but it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place,” the president said. “And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white.”
“I don’t care who they are. I don’t care about their race, their color. I don’t care about their height, their weight… I just know that what’s happening is terrible,” he said before hammering the media over what he said was a double standard.
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“If it were the other way around, they’d talk about it. That would be the only story they’d talk about,” he said.
Later in the day, Alcindor had a meltdown while discussing the topic.
“I’ve been talking to a number of people who say it’s heartbreaking that the Trump administration has ended TPS for Afghans. I want to read to you part of what the reasoning is that the Trump administration is putting out. They say, ‘We have reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for TPS designation,’” the reporter said.
“But I’ve been talking to people who say, ‘Look, Afghanistan is a country that now has all these regulations against women. They can’t go to school, they can’t speak in public, even.’ There are also people in hiding—I’ve spoken to some of them in hiding—who helped the U.S. military before the Taliban went back into power. So, there are a lot of people who are now feeling heartbroken by this decision by the Trump administration,” she said.
“It is surprising. All right, so what is different about these Afrikaners who have been allowed to come into the country, these 49 Afrikaners?” anchor Katy Tur said.
“Well, it’s a big question, and it’s a key question here. We know that the Trump administration suspended the refugee resettlement program, saying that essentially we didn’t have space for this. I want to read to you part of what their reasoning was at the time,” Alcindor said.
“They said, ‘The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities.’ It went on to say that this really ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” the reporter said.
“But I’ve been talking to folks, and they say, really, this is about race. They think—especially some South Africans who fled after the apartheid and the racist regime there—I talked to some people who told me that they feel like this is the President essentially taking the side of people who are white over Black refugees, including in places like Sudan and the Congo. There was also a question: why is there an exception being made?” she said.
“So, the Trump administration there is saying that essentially these white South Africans assimilate better, and they’re also not as much of a security risk. That’s really causing a lot of people to be appalled, frankly. I should tell people that this violence that they’re talking about, that these Afrikaners are dealing with—I’ve been hearing from people who say there is violence in South Africa, but it’s affecting everybody of every single race,” she said, ignoring data that shows white farmers have faced the most attacks.