The Road to Trump’s Embrace of White South Africans

In a rare pivot on May 15, 2019, President Trump switched the focus of a national security meeting in the Situation Room from Iran to offering asylum and citizenship to white South African farmers. During a previous encounter, Trump had floated the idea, according to John R. Bolton, then national security adviser, who described it as something trivial given his history of embracing fringe ideas pushed by white Afrikaner activists. Bolton recalled Trump treating such notions as "typical Trump" and often fixated on them, saying it never amounted to anything but was emblematic of his tendency to get carried away with baseless claims.