Unlike Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, he came all dressed up in a suit and bearing a gift, — no, not a $400 million fancy plane — just a 30-pound compendium of South African golf courses for the golf-fanatic Donald Trump.
President Cyril Ramaphosa also brought along Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, two white South African golfers who are both in the Hall of Fame and have won six U.S. Open titles between them, and his white agriculture minister John Steenhuisen.
Yet all that didn’t save him from the Oval Office dressing-down from Trump as he dimmed the lights and rolled out a multimedia show of right-wing propaganda about South Africa. “Death, death, death,” he said flipping through printouts of articles about the killings of White Afrikaners.
“They’re being executed, and they happen to be White, and most of them happen to be farmers,” the President told his stunned guest hours after welcoming “Ramaphosa to the White House ” on his Truth Social.
As the U.S. embraces white South Africans after suspending refugee programs for everyone else, the POTUS simply brushed aside Ramaphosa’s attempt to set the record straight saying, “If there was Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here.”
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“This is a very serious situation. If we had a real press, it would be exposed. When it gets exposed, it’ll get fixed. But people don’t talk about it. And I’ll tell you who is talking about it, thousands of people that are fleeing South Africa right now,” an Unconvinced Trump later posted on Truth Social.
Even as a CNN analyst described the televised Oval Office take-down of the latest “MAGA prop” Ramaphosa, as “the new Hunger Games of world politics,” Trump listed ” South Africa Visit” — admittedly a fiasco at least for Ramaphosa — among the nine achievements of a “MagAMAZING Week!” topped of course by the U.S. House passage of “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Trump’s big stick indeed helped the House deliver what he called “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” exhorting “our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”
Even as critics suggested that the bill that would add $3.8 trillion to Uncle Sam’s $36.2 trillion debt over the next decade, would face more hurdles in the Senate, Trump is likely to get his way there too with few Republicans willing to risk the wrath of a vindictive president and alienate their base voters.
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However, his big stick was not working as well in the courts where according to one count Trump administration is facing at least 208 lawsuits challenging 90 plus executive orders. As the New York Times noted there is a rising chorus by courts that immigrants too have rights and “the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.”
Trump went ballistic as a “Federal Judge in Boston, who knew absolutely nothing about the situation, or anything else, has ordered that EIGHT of the most violent criminals on Earth curtail their journey to South Sudan, and instead remain in Djibouti.”
He then turned to the somewhat friendly SCOTUS to rein in the “absolutely out of control” who are “hurting our Country” and “put an END to the quagmire that has been caused by the Radical Left.”
But in one major victory, the SCOTUS by a 6-3 vote did let Trump temporarily remove the leaders of two independent agencies — National Labor Relations Board, and the Merit Systems Protection Board — even as it insulated Fed Reserve board members from firings by a president. In another ruling it also let the Trump administration remove protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially allowing it to move ahead with deportations.
But A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department and ordering that fired employees be reinstated.
READ: Trumpiana: Tariff tango, Harvard hoopla, judges jiggle and Russian rumba (April 27, 2025)
Another federal judge in Washington questioned the gutting of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent nonprofit group created by Congress to help resolve violent international conflicts, as “a gross usurpation of power.”
Yet another federal judge in California blocked the administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.
Amidst the ongoing standoff between Trump and Harvard University, a judge temporarily halted the administration’s plan to revoke the Ivy League school’s ability to enrol foreign students calling it a “blatant violation” of the law and free speech rights.
“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” — more than 7,000 visa holders, including a large number from India — Harvard argued in its lawsuit.
Swiftly hitting back, a White House spokesperson blasted the judge accusing him of having a “liberal agenda.”
“These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy,” she said.
Meanwhile, as the Pentagon officially accepted a luxury Boeing 747 ‘palace in the sky’ from Qatar to use as the new Air Force One, Trump announced plans to host “a magnificent Parade to honor the United States Army’s 250th Birthday,” on June 14, which just happens to be his own 79th birthday. The extravaganza is estimated to cost a staggering $45 million.
And then baiting his critics worried about seeking a third presidential term despite a constitutional bar, Trump posted a wild clip on Truth Social suggesting he could remain in office “forever” with a fake Time magazine cover.
With headlines like “Trumpism Outlives Trump” and “The Power of Trump’s Support,” the satirical cover imagines Trump being elected far into the future, with years scrolling — Trump 2028, 2032, 2050, 2080 upward to the year 90,000 — sending them all again into a tizzy.