MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was in the Oval Office today trying, he said, to reset the relationship between the two countries. But President Trump had other plans. As the two leaders began to answer questions from reporters, Trump did something unusual.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Turn the lights down. Turn the lights down and just put this on. It's right behind you, Johann (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: There's nothing this parliament can do. With or without you, people are going to occupy land.
KELLY: He showed a five-minute video montage to his guests. NPR's senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins me now from the White House to explain. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: So explain - what was this video?
LIASSON: Well, this was a planned moment, and the video showed leaders of a minority party in South Africa singing an apartheid-era struggle song called "Kill The Boer" - that's B-O-E-R, which means farmer or Afrikaner. And that is something that Ramaphosa says the - says is rhetoric he rejects and always has.
Whites, who account for about 7% of the population in South Africa, still own about 70% of commercial farmland. And white - while South Africa does suffer from high crime rates, Black people bear the brunt of violent crime in the country. But Trump has claimed for years, without evidence, that South Africa has allowed what he calls a genocide of white South African farmers, and so he showed him this montage that he said proved his point.
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TRUMP: But you do allow them to take land.
PRESIDENT CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: No, no, no, no.
TRUMP: You do allow them to take land.
RAMAPHOSA: No. Nobody can take land...
TRUMP: And then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer. And when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.
RAMAPHOSA: No, no. There is quite...
TRUMP: Nothing happens.
KELLY: So you can hear Ramaphosa there saying, no, no, no, no, no - pushing back. Tell me more about his reaction.
LIASSON: Well, he came prepared for what clearly had the potential to be an explosive meeting. It's as if the South African delegation went to school on the Zelenskyy meeting...
KELLY: Yeah.
LIASSON: ...Of course, that meeting that they argued on camera. The meeting ended abruptly. But Ramaphosa was prepared for an ambush. He was very calm throughout. He didn't try to argue with the president. And he brought with him some friends - some powerful white friends - to help him try to convince Trump.
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RAMAPHOSA: I would say, if there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here, including my minister of agriculture. He would not be with me. So it'll take him - President Trump - listening to their stories, to their perspective.
KELLY: OK, hang on, Mara. Who are these three gentlemen he's referring to?
LIASSON: There was his white minister of agriculture, who's from an opposition party who vouched for Ramaphosa. He also brought two champion golfers from South Africa, including Trump's friend Ernie Els, and a billionaire luxury good magnate Johann Rupert, who's also a Trump friend. And their message was very simple. They said, you know what? We do have a crime problem in South Africa. We need to work with you, our great partner, on this. We need tech. We need Elon Musk's Starlink. We need all sorts of other kinds of crime-fighting machinery like drones that can help us.
KELLY: Sounds like quite a day at the White House - did they get to what Trump wants Ramaphosa to actually do?
LIASSON: Well, he was asked that question directly, and he said, I don't know. And later, he was asked if he was convinced that genocide was occurring in South Africa. And despite his insistence that it was, he said, quote, "I haven't made up my mind."
KELLY: And how did all this end? I'm remembering, you referred to Zelenskyy's Oval Office meeting, when that all went off the rails. He left the West Wing. He didn't even get lunch. Did Ramaphosa?
LIASSON: I think he got lunch.
KELLY: (Laughter).
LIASSON: He kept his eye on his goal, which is to get investment from the United States in South Africa, which of course would give business to U.S. companies. And we're going to see which Trump emerges from these meetings - the expert practitioner of white identity politics, which he's been his whole career, or the deal-maker looking for trade and investment deals, or maybe both.
KELLY: NPR's Mara Liasson at the White House. Thanks, Mara.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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