Former national security adviser John Bolton said President Trump’s allegations of white genocide in South Africa were unfounded during a Friday appearance on CNN’s “CNN News Central.”
Trump engaged in a heated back-and-forth on Wednesday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over the claims.
“I don‘t profess to be an expert on South Africa, so I asked experts on the staff of the NSC [National Security Council], what‘s up with this killing of white farmers, displacement, seizure of their lands? And they came back and said, there‘s nothing. It‘s just not true,” Bolton said during his CNN appearance.
“South Africa has a high crime rate in urban areas and rural areas. It‘s a big problem, black and white. It‘s a big problem,” he added.
The Trump administration has agreed to admit white South African farmers to the United States as refugees amid claims of genocide.
During the Oval Office visit, Trump showed footage he falsely claimed was filmed in South Africa while those on tape shouted “kill the farmer” and chanted about shooting Afrikaners.
The clip grabbed from Reuters was actually captured in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over a thousand miles away from South Africa.
Bolton questioned who vetted the video prior to the president presenting it to Ramaphosa in front of cameras.
“The films the president showed, the articles that he handed President Ramaphosa, was any of that run by the American intelligence community or our experts in the State Department, the Defense Department and elsewhere? Did anybody vet that information?” Bolton asked on air.
Despite proof that the video was not captured in South Africa, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down on the video during Thursday’s press briefing.
“It’s unsubstantiated that that’s the case,” NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor told Leavitt.
“No, it’s true that the video showed image of crosses in South Africa about white farmers that have been killed and politically persecuted because of the color of their skin,” Leavitt responded.
“Those crosses are representing their lives, and the fact that they are now dead, and the government did nothing about it,” she continued.
Bolton said the Trump administration’s false claims will impact the country’s global standing with other heads of state after a series of contentious meetings with world figures, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“It’s a real blow to American credibility even leaving aside the theater in the Oval Office with Ramaphosa, with Zelensky, with Macron, with Carney. After a while, people would rather go sea shipping than meet with Donald Trump,” he told CNN.