About a week after telling Arab heads of state that America would no longer berate them about human rights, Trump subjected Cyril Ramaphosa to the Zelensky treatment at the White House. His clear intent was to humiliate the leader of a regional power over a bogus issue–the supposed genocide of white farmers in South Africa. What was the point?
To exercise his id and please Musk and the base, I suppose. But consider the larger impact of those TV images. Trump believes in personal diplomacy; what world leader, other than Bibi or MBS, will want to visit the White House after watching that ugly display? And South Africa has never behaved as an American vassal state; how can alienating it improve America’s image in Africa and the rest of the Third World?