CSotD: Asimbonanga
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The good thing is, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa knew what he was getting into. Or at least Zapiro did, having drawn this cartoon more than a week before yesterday’s shameful public exhibition of lies and attempted bullying.
Perhaps, having spent the first 38 years of his life living under apartheid, Ramaphosa was well-adapted to quietly refute the insults and lies, maintaining his own self-respect in the presence of an American president with none.
It likely helped to have seen Volodymyr Zelenskyy put through a similar ritual onslaught of televised abuse. And it was a ritual: Ramaphosa reports that, once the TV cameras were turned off, the remainder of the visit was polite and positive.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Trump sets Oval Office visits as traps in which to humiliate heads of state to impress his loyal followers, but is it really a trap when his childish, adolescent intentions are so clear, even to an observer in Jordan, even to an observer in Brazil?
You come in, he assails you with lies and insults to impress the boobs who follow him, and then the reporters go away and you get down to business.
If anyone asks about the bizarre exhibition, Karoline Leavitt cheerfully piles on the falsehoods to make the intended impression clear, then insults the reporter who dared ask.
Nobody believes this obviously false video except Karoline Leavitt. Certainly not Donald Trump, since we’ve long gone past the question of what Dear Leader pretends to believe and how truly gullible he is. Well, maybe he does believe it.
However, it really doesn’t matter if he believes the things he says. He believes they will have an impact, and it’s clear that his intention is to bully and harass, or else why would he have a propaganda video edited, queued up and ready to play for his guest and the press?
In any case, the cascade of falsehoods is so massive, yet so easily dismissed, that there’s little point in wasting words here when South Africa’s Daily Maverick has produced its own video response.
Not that they were the only ones to instantly refute the nonsensical claims. It didn’t take a great deal of research to uncover the deceit: It’s as if Dear Leader had insisted that zebras can fly or that Africa is an island in Lake Superior.
Not only is it easy enough to discredit photos from the war-torn Congo presented as evidence of South African crime, but the earlier declaration that Afrikaners are subject to discrimination qualifying them as refugees had already started news outlets like Politifact and CNN and the BBC and the Independent and NPR and PBS and FactCheck and, good lord, even Barrons ready to pounce upon his ridiculous, insulting, untrue claims.
To which I would add that it only took me a few minutes and few keystrokes to uncover those refutations, which is likely why NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor was prepared to ask Leavitt about the fake video so soon after it was unveiled.
We’ve reached the point where nobody without a red cap permanently grafted to their head has any faith in Dear Leader’s honesty and credibility, though a visit to Xitter or Threads will reveal plenty who maintain faith in flying zebras and that Great Lakes island.
Like Reynolds, Madam & Eve made fun of Trump even before the meeting took place, in their case using a new character in the strip, a penguin who emerged after Dear Leader, to the amusement — but only slightly the surprise — of international observers, imposed tariffs on an island inhabited only by the flightless birds.
But if they’re laughing, perhaps we shouldn’t be. When the word “idiotic” comes up in coverage of your nation’s leader, it’s hard not to suspect that the charge rubs off a bit on you as well for having put yourself under his command.
Not only do outsiders accept Trump’s dishonesty as a given, but they are not reluctant to theorize as to why he is a champion of a handful of Afrikaners’ pleas for refugee status while turning away thousands from Venezuela, Haiti and other “shithole countries” and even returning our Afghan allies from the late war to face death in their original homeland.
Turner essentially confirms Lucas’s analysis, suggesting that Dear Leader is aware of others around the world who could use a little mercy and consideration, but — with only his marginal character saying why he suspects Trump of feeling that way — simply observes that Trump doesn’t consider those others a priority.
And, gosh, it sure was nice to see Elon Musk back in the White House for this event, since he seems to have been exiled after completing his masterful job of whatever the hell that was that he allegedly accomplished.
Note that Glez gave him more lines in the meeting than Trump did.
“This is a scandal, this land-grabbing!”
“Are you speaking about Greenland?”
Clay Jones channeled Sarah McLachlan, offering a sad, heart-breaking bit of pity-porn in support of sad, heart-breaking faux-refugees, though I think he’d raise more money if, instead of a free tote bag, he offered a fwee adowable bwanket.
And Benjamin Kikkert skips the details to just explain how these staged confrontations actually come about, which is that, while they have no factual basis and make no kind of sense, they are pleasant to Dear Leader’s ego, which, in itself, seems to be sufficient motivation.
Enough.
There are plenty of links to click today if you need to confirm things or enjoy beating yourself up with unpleasant realities.
Otherwise, here’s one more link, to a pleasant, fascinating portrait of the late Johnny Clegg and his nation, offered as an example of how a white boy can adapt to life in an overwhelmingly black culture and not only come to love it but to be loved by it.
And here’s a refutation of hate and despair that he left behind:
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