President Donald Trump didn't hide his disgust when asked Friday why he was allowing white South African farmers into the United States but "closed off that door" to many other refugees.
A U.S.-funded charter flight brought close to 60 Afrikaner families to the the U.S. state of Idaho earlier this week under a humanitarian program designed for people fleeing war or persecution.
Afrikaners are white South Africans of Dutch descent.
"What message does that send? Why is that fair?" the reporter is heard asking on an audio recording made aboard Air Force One as Trump returned to the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East.
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“I think if I see people in distress, I don’t care what color, what they look like, what anything—their size, their height, their eyes. I don’t care,” he said.
“But, I think that from all evidence, the farmers in South Africa are being treated brutally. And it’s been reported, and nobody wants to cover it, but they happen to be white. And if they were Black, I’d do the exact same thing. And we treat people very well when we see there’s a genocide going on,” he said. “So if it’s a genocide, that’s terrible. And I happen to believe it could very well be.”
In February, the South African courts ruled that talk of a "white genocide" is merely a myth.
Trump then branded the reporter's question as “nasty.”
“And I’m not looking for reporting because, believe me, it’s easier for me not to do anything. It’s a lot easier because I don’t get nasty questions like that,” the president said.
“But the fact is that we’re about saving lives, and we’re gonna do that. So we’ve made a home, and we’ll make a home for other people that are treated badly, no matter what their color.”
Listen to the audio here.
