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From white genocide to nukes: Is Trump actually being played for a fool?
US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Picture: AFP
The story goes that in a field near a village, a bored shepherd decided to cry wolf. The villagers came out to help chase the beast away, only to find that there was none. Amused, the boy repeated the trick several more times. When the wolf finally did come, the shepherd found there was no one to help.
In the end, a whole lot of sheep died.
While it is a familiar bedtime story to teach about the consequences of lying, it is also a living nightmare that celeb Donald Trump has found himself starring in.
When the US military bombed three reported Iranian nuclear sites last Sunday, Trump became the latest US president to stick his nose in Middle Eastern business – and all on a cry from ally Israel.
Israel, a week or so earlier, had used a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which found Iran was not complying with its nuclear obligations, to start bombing Tehran. I said this was necessary because Iran had been stockpiling enriched uranium and was weeks away from creating a nuclear weapon.
The cry reached the White House, and Trump put on his superhero suit to save the world.
The problem is, this cry was not new.
Israel has been claiming Iran is about to construct a nuclear weapon for decades. In 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the weapon would be finished in months. Nine years later, Israel said the weapon was only two months away from completion. In 2025, the line was being parroted to justify bombings.
It is likely that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, as Israel claims, or it could be simply using nuclear energy to provide electricity to its residents.
Wherever you sit on the debate, what is more concerning is the trigger-happy actions of the US, which claimed to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities when an intelligence report found otherwise.
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Trump to rescue SA from ‘white genocide’
Weeks before Trump’s crusade against Iran, he was obsessed with rescuing South Africans from a “white genocide” — also off a friend’s cry.
Trump welcomed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House in May, only to then show him a slideshow of evidence to back his claim of mass racially based killings.
Not only was some of the evidence false and others flimsy, but official crime records don’t back up the claim.
It didn’t matter because Trump was already all-in, even extending refugee status to “victims” of South Africa’s human rights violations.
It is likely that Trump was creating his own genocide complaint to throw at South Africa, amid our country’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, but it seems more influential was the word of his former bestie, Elon Musk.
The SA-born billionaire has long been spreading the claims of a white genocide, and he seemed to have Trump’s ear.
But when the pair fell out, suddenly white genocide was off the agenda, and one of Trump’s own advisors admitted there were no such killings.
The cries in the White House corridors were then about Trump being misled.
How many more cries will Trump respond to before he realises the wolves may be among him?
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