Ever since President Donald Trump announced a complete freeze on U.S. foreign aid to South Africa in March—citing the government’s targeting of white Afrikaner farmers—the left has been scrambling to deny that any genocide is taking place. But on Wednesday, in a lively Oval Office meeting, Trump blindsided South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with damning evidence of racially motivated violence. It’s a stunning reflection of where we are as a society: the left is so ideologically committed to its victimhood hierarchy that it simply refuses to acknowledge that white people can be victims of racism—or even genocide.
On CNN’s “The Arena,” sparks flew during a heated debate over President Trump’s Oval Office showdown with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. At the center of the controversy was Trump’s unapologetic decision to call out what conservatives have long described as a campaign of anti-white violence and land seizures targeting white farmers—a reality the mainstream media stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. Right on cue, left-wing outlets rushed to dismiss Trump’s warnings of genocide as fiction. And in a moment that perfectly captures the moral rot of the modern left, some commentators actually admitted that, yes, white people are being murdered—but not in large enough numbers to qualify as genocide.
You can’t make this up.
Left-wing journalist Zolan Kanno-Youngs tried to downplay the issue, characterizing the mounting concerns as “false claims of white genocide.” According to Kanno-Youngs, “police statistics in South Africa do show that on the subject of killings, there are not mass killings of white South Africans.” He conceded that there have been “gruesome killings of white farmers, individual cases,” but insisted the data doesn’t show a higher murder rate for white South Africans overall. In other words, move along—nothing to see here.
Related: Trump Epically Ambushed the South African President in the Oval Office
Kanno-Youngs then attempted to justify South Africa’s controversial land seizure law. “Under apartheid… it was very, very difficult, almost impossible for black people to own farmland,” he said. He noted that the new expropriation law includes “judicial review” and must be in “the public interest.” But the attempt to reframe the racialized land confiscation program as merely a matter of fairness did little to change the narrative pushed by Trump—or the facts on the ground.
“The nuance,” Kanno-Youngs scolded, “has not been articulated by President Trump.” Instead, he bemoaned what he called the “amplifying of these false descriptions of the reality on the ground,” blaming Afrikaner lobbying groups for convincing Republicans and Trump to take action.
Of course, we know that's a bunch of bunk because Trump showed video evidence to Ramaphosa in the Oval Office on Wednesday, quite literally forcing Ramaphosa to confront what the media has long tried to ignore.
That may not have sat well with CNN, but it did with us here at PJ Media. And CNN’s Scott Jennings thought it was great too, and called Kanno-Youngs out for his denialism. “Whether you call it a genocide or not, the facts are white farmers in South Africa have been murdered,” he stated. “A lot of people have tried to cover this up. A lot of people and, I think, media in the United States have tried to cover it up.”
Jennings praised Trump for cutting through the spin: “It was kind of a boss move for Donald Trump to roll that television in there today,” he said. “Even the Agriculture Minister in the Oval Office confirmed that these people are in fact being murdered.”
He then asked the blunt question that left the panel in awkward silence: “If it’s not a genocide today, how many do we wanna let get murdered so that people around here can be satisfied?”
It’s a valid point. Are we really going to let semantic hair-splitting cloud what’s plainly happening? Are we so obsessed with technical classifications that we’ll downplay the bloodshed just to avoid agreeing with Trump?
Jennings continued, blasting the left’s selective outrage. “We’re talking about 50-something people they were trying to let in, and everybody’s losing their mind after we let in 20 million illegal immigrants over the last several years.”
A CNN panelist tired to dismiss concerns that white farmers in South Africa are being targeted.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 21, 2025
Scott Jennings hit back with an important question.
"If it's not a genocide today, how many do we want to let get murdered so that people around here can be satisfied?" pic.twitter.com/z5x3bBO4Gq
In a moment the media couldn’t spin away, Trump forced the issue into the spotlight—and no amount of CNN handwringing can change the fact that people are being killed while the world (at least the left-leaning world) looks the other way.
