The MAGA-boosting Canadian businessman also told Fox News on Tuesday that he had no idea "why this particular group gets all this focus." O’Leary added that "every administration has its own policy" on immigration and that he doesn’t "understand this debate at all" over white South Africans getting fast-tracked to citizenship while Trump shuts out most other refugee admissions.
Following his vow in February to cut off all funding to South Africa and "resettle" white Afrikaners in America over a new land expropriation law, Trump announced on Monday that 59 white South African "refugees" were en route to the United States. The president also made it clear he was echoing the debunked "white genocide" conspiracy theory that alleges white farmers in South Africa are being targeted and killed en masse.
"It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about," Trump declared in the Oval Office. "It's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa."
Despite the president’s claims, which have been amplified in recent years by South African-born "first buddy" Elon Musk and right-wing media figures such as Tucker Carlson, there’s no evidence that white farmers are facing a spike in violence and murders. Despite the prevalence of online misinformation that tends to center around a few high-profile cases, it’s estimated that roughly 50 farmers, from different racial backgrounds, were killed last year in a country that recorded over 19,000 murders.