The Memo: Zelensky 2.0? Trump's ambush of Ramaphosa caters to MAGA base

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : President Trump for the second time used a meeting with a major foreign leader to cater to his own base on Wednesday.
56% : For the moment, however, the South African president emerged relatively unscathed even as Trump sought to use the encounter as aggressively as possible.
55% : But the law is subject to judicial review and Ramaphosa countered Trump by emphasizing that the U.S. federal government also enjoys a right to take over private property under eminent domain.
46% : Trump has taken particular exception to the recent passage of a law that enables expropriation of land.
43% : Trump referred to the speeches as coming from "officials," a term that could be taken to imply the speakers were members of Ramaphosa's government.
40% : As with so much else in relation to Trump, the episodes may simply break down along the usual deeply polarized lines.
39% : And it appeared just as much of a preplanned ambush, especially when Trump asked for the lights in the Oval Office to be lowered so he could show a video of incendiary remarks from South African politicians.
38% : This time it was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who Trump used as a foil, just as he and Vice President Vance had hammered on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in late February.
38% : Still, the broader political reality is that Trump used the meeting with the South African president to amplify a narrative that he has pushed domestically.
23% : Still, Trump seemed undeterred by those points, continuing to insist that the situation in South Africa is akin to an anti-white apartheid and that people who kill white farmers enjoy de facto immunity.
23% : Trump appears to believe that institutions that endorse DEI goals are guilty of reverse racism.

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