Photo: Alamy
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sparred with a member of the press on Thursday during a press briefing, delivering a hardline defense of President Trump’s important meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday.
NBC White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor opened her question with a statement, remarking that a video shown by President Trump yesterday to Ramaphosa, which showed white crosses representing the lives of “over a thousand” murdered white South Africans, was “unsubstantiated.”
“We know that that was not true,” Alcindor said.
Leavitt responded, “The video showed images of crosses in South Africa about white farmers who have been killed and politically persecuted because of the color of their skin.”
President Trump said yesterday that South Africans “are fleeing because of the violence and racist laws.”
As reported by RSBN, Trump also explained that the video, shown to Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, allegedly depicted a line of vehicles paying their respect to loved ones who have been killed by racially motivated violence.
During Thursday’s briefing, Alcindor essentially asked who is verifying the videos the president is showing and what “protocols are in place when there’s unsubstantiated information being put out” from the White House.
“What’s unsubstantiated about the video?” Leavitt shot back. “The video shows crosses that represent the dead bodies of people who were racially persecuted by their government. In fact, the Associated Press, of all places, has a picture of that very monument, and the caption from the Associated Press is ‘each cross marks a farmer who has been killed in a farm murder.’”
She continued, “So it is substantiated, not just by that video and the physical evidence that everybody saw on display in the Oval Office, but also by another outlet in this room, the Associated Press.”
It is interesting to note that this is the second time this week that NBC has been in the hot seat at the White House. Yesterday, an NBC reporter drew President Trump’s ire by asking an ill-timed question about Qatar just after the video about reported white genocide in South Africa was played in the Oval Office. Trump called this reporter a “disgrace” and roundly criticized NBC.
Leavitt told Alcindor that her comments were “a ridiculous line of questioning.”
