What did Donald Trump do today?

He got ready to deport Afghans who helped the United States while welcoming exclusively white "refugees" from South Africa.

The Trump administration conducted a gaudy welcome ceremony for 59 citizens of South Africa, all of them white, declaring them "refugees" from a non-existent "genocide." In reality, some white landowners whose ownership of farms has its roots in decades of apartheid-era oppression of Black South Africas are upset by a new law which allows the government to seize unused or underused land for public development. (The United States and virtually every other country has a similar legal process, generally known as eminent domain.) 

Little if any land has been seized from white farmers under the law, and none without compensation. Trump has referred to this as a "genocide," a characterization that white South Africans themselves overwhelmingly reject.

Trump, who falsely assumes Congressional districts with Black representatives are "crime-infested" and who railed against "shithole countries" with Black- or Latino-majority populations, insisted that race was not a factor in remarks today. He then immediately followed that statement by saying that he had offered refugee status exclusively to the white Afrikaner minority because "white farmers" were being killed. In reality, three times as many Black South Africans were killed on farms in recent years.

A State Department spokesperson later made the subtext even clearer, saying that white South Africans were being favored over people in actual danger because, apparently unlike refugees from almost any other group, they "could be assimilated easily."

Trump has shut down virtually every other refugee assistance program while openly courting the white Afrikaner population, apparently at the instruction of his political patron Elon Musk, whose family fortune also has its roots in apartheid. 

As of today, that includes protection from deportations for Afghan citizens who aided the United States during its decades-long war in that country. The current Taliban-dominated government of Afghanistan is very likely to persecute refugees deported from the United States. The Trump administration's official line is that Afghanistan is now "peaceful."

Why does this matter?

• The only reason to make a public show of welcoming wealthy white "refugees" in no actual danger is to make a mockery of people who actually need help.

•  Betraying allies who sacrificed their lives and family members for the United States may common under Trump, but it's still evil.