After President Donald Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a protégé of Nelson Mandela, in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Wendy R. Sherman, the newly retired U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, voiced her disapproval on X.
[Sherman, who worked at State during the Biden administration, also served under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as under secretary of state for political affairs during the Obama administration.]
Sherman wrote: “What leader will come to the WH for an Oval Office mtg when it is simply an ambush so @realDonaldTrump can use the media to incite his followers? So utterly unpresidential.”
What leader will come to the WH for an Oval Office mtg when it is simply an ambush so @realDonaldTrump can use the media to incite his followers? So utterly unpresidential.
— Wendy R. Sherman (@wendyrsherman) May 21, 2025
Trump showed video of what he presented as burial sites of murdered White South Africans during Ramaphosa’s visit, presenting the images as real, though they were not real graves but part of a temporary memorial bringing attention to the murders of two White South Africans in 2020.
As the video played in front of Ramaphosa, Trump claimed: “These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers.”
Trump told Ramaphosa that his administration was accepting South African refugees because of what he said might amount to genocide: “A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa… we have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they are coming to the US, so we take from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on.”
President Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa exchange on genocide.
Q: “What will it take for you to be convinced that there’s no white genocide in South Africa?”
Ramaphosa: “I can answer that for the president.”
Trump: “I’d rather have him answer.” pic.twitter.com/8v8hXFGmK0
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 21, 2025
Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Daniel Fried, who also served as special envoy for the closing of the Guantanamo detention camp and retired in 2017 shortly after Trump’s 2016 presidential election, agreed with Sherman.
Fried replied: “Putin or Xi could come to the Oval confident that they, at least, would face no ambush.” Fried’s comment singled out two leaders whose nations do not have a power deficit with the U.S., and so would be, he implies, less likely to face Trump’s disrespect.
Putin or Xi could come to the Oval confident that they, at least, would face no ambush.
— Daniel Fried (@AmbDanFried) May 21, 2025
[Trump had doubled down on his claims, saying to Ramaphosa: “They’re being executed, and they happen to be White, and most of them happen to be farmers.”]
The idea that foreign leaders might be “ambushed” by the President in the Oval Office received fuel from the March visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when he was badgered by Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who characterized Zelensky as “disrespectful” and insufficiently grateful for U.S. assistance.
(The New York Times headline read ‘Trump Berates Zelensky in Fiery Exchange at the White House’.)
More recently newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was a guest in the Oval Office, where he was forced to insist his country was “not for sale” as President Trump again claimed that Canada should become the 51st state.