Thursday Briefing

President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times

Trump lectured South Africa’s president

During a fraught White House meeting with a stunned President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, President Trump showed a görüntü and waved around printouts of what he said was evidence of racial persecution of white South Africans, including killings.

Trump flipped through his printouts, saying, “Death, death, death,” and he largely dismissed Ramaphosa’s attempt to describe the situation in his own country. While watching the görüntü, Ramaphosa questioned the locations being shown, which he said he didn’t recognize as being in South Africa.

The meeting “was a stark example of a foreign leader essentially trying to give a reality check to Trump, who instead amplified fringe theories,” said Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House reporter for The New York Times. There have been killings of white South Africans, but police statistics do not show that they are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people. Here’s what else to know.

On Politics: Trump accused South Africa’s government of seizing land from white farmers, but during his first term, he pushed to take farmers’ land for his border wall.

Background: The U.S. is welcoming white South Africans while suspending refugee programs for everyone else. Several factors have fueled the administration’s hostile approach to South Africa’s government.

Immigration: A judge said the Trump administration had violated a court order by quickly deporting migrants to South Sudan. Here is a breakdown of how the administration is targeting new groups for deportation.