‘PERSONA NON GRATA’: Marco Rubio Says South Africa’s Ambassador ‘No Longer Welcome’ in U.S.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Friday evening on social media that South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S. was barred from entering the country.
Rubio shared reporting from the far-right media outlet Breitbart News comments by Ambassador Embrahim Rasool linking President Donald Trump to White supremacy.
America’s top diplomat declared Rasool, “PERSONA NON GRATA.”
On X, Rubio shared a Breitbart post headlined, “South African Ambassador Emrahim Rasool: Trump is Leading Global White Supremacist Movement.”
Rubio posted, “South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”
Breitbart carried comments Rasool made while addressing a crowd in the country in which he said:
What Donald Trump is launching is an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency, at home, and — I think I’ve illustrated — abroad as well.
[…]
Vice President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign. And that, then, begins to say, what then was the role of Afrikaners in that whole makeup. And very clearly, it’s to project white victimhood as a dog whistle that there is a global protective movement that is beginning to envelop embattled white communities or apparently embattles white communities. It may not be true, it may not make sense, but that is not the dog whistle that is being heard in a global, white base. So I think we need to understand all of that. Another discontinuity — it’s almost that they are pitting a supremacist insurgency against the incumbency.
The Associated Press reported after Rubio’s social media post:
The State Department did not have additional details, and it was unclear whether the ambassador was even in the U.S. at the time the decision was made. Rubio posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers in Quebec.
The Trump administration has publicly criticized South African lawmakers while claiming the country’s minority White population is unsafe amid post-apartheid-era land ownership reforms.
In a Feb. 7 executive order, Trump said South African lawmakers had enabled the government “to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” and offered the country’s White population refuge.
Trump said those affected were “escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination” and vowed to cut off foreign aid to the country.
