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Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of South Africa, May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025 · The White House · 1:04:10

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump participated in a bilateral meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office on May 21, 2025, carried in full on the White House channel. Pressed by reporters on what would convince him on the situation in South Africa, Ramaphosa answered: “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans,” adding, as he stated his position: “If there was Afrikaner genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture. He would not be with me.”

The President then had the lights lowered and screened video in the Oval Office. “This is very bad. These are burial sites, over 1,000 white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and that’s approximately 1,000 of them. They are all white farmers, the family of white farmers,” he said, as he narrated the footage and stated his characterization of it. Ramaphosa responded that he had never seen the footage and asked where it was taken: “I’d like to know where that is, because this I’ve never seen,” as he replied in the meeting. The exchange also covered the President’s trade diplomacy — “We settled that, and I think I settled it through trade,” he said of the India–Pakistan clash — his two-and-a-half-hour call with President Putin two days earlier, and the Pentagon’s acceptance of a Qatari aircraft, which the President defended when a reporter raised it: “They are giving the United States Air Force a jet, okay, and it’s a great thing,” as he stated the arrangement.

Why it matters

This Oval Office meeting is the fullest on-record statement of the two presidents’ opposing accounts, made face to face: the screened footage and the President’s characterization of it, and Ramaphosa’s denial and request for the footage’s provenance, both preserved in the same broadcast — alongside the trade and Ukraine readouts the President gave the same day.

Scoreboard watch

This meeting is a scoreboard reference point: the President’s May 21, 2025 presentation of the South Africa footage and Ramaphosa’s on-camera dispute of its characterization, each as stated in the meeting, to be checked against the subsequent diplomatic record.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of South Africa” (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the President and by President Ramaphosa in the meeting.