Trump Rushes to Do President Elon Musk’s Dirty Work With South Africa

The president has decided to throw some weight behind one of his closest advisers when it comes to dealing with South Africa.

Despite tariff-induced tumult at home, Donald Trump took the time Friday morning to lambast South Africa for how it treats its farmers, threatening aggressive foreign policy toward the continent’s strongest economy by announcing that the United States would stop all federal funding to the African nation.

“South Africa is being terrible, plus, to long time Farmers in the country,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT. A bad place to be right now, and we are stopping all Federal Funding. To go a step further, any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!”

The missive came hand in hand with a complaint from Elon Musk, who whined on X mere hours before that South Africa would not allow his international internet project to get off the ground, due to a lack of diversity at the billionaire’s company.

“Starlink is not allowed to operate in South Africa, because I’m not black,” Musk posted on X Friday morning.

But that wasn’t exactly an accurate reflection of why Musk’s home country has refused to approve SpaceX’s Starlink service.

The South African government’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy stipulates that all companies that do business in the nation must have at least 30 percent of their ownership or economic involvement owned by Black South Africans.

The mandate is a part of the country’s efforts to correct inequalities left in the wake of apartheid, striving to “advance economic transformation and enhance the economic participation of black people in the South African economy,” per the South African Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition.

Musk has practically made the notion of diversity his enemy as he works—via the Department of Government Efficiency—to strip and defund federal agencies whose missions make mention of inclusivity efforts.

“DEI is just another word for racism,” Musk wrote in January. “Shame on anyone who uses it.”

The world’s richest man’s affinity for Nazi salutes have also called into question his racial ideology, especially as a descendant of Nazi sympathizers. That is according to his father, Errol Musk, who told the Podcast and Chill Network in November that the billionaire’s maternal grandparents supported Adolf Hitler and were members of the German Nazi Party in Canada before moving to South Africa in support of apartheid.

Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense has marked an image of the USAAF B29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima for deletion—and its reason may be the perfect illustration of why right now really isn’t a good time to be closing the Department of Education.

That historical image was among 26,000 that were marked for deletion as part of the  DOD’s rushed efforts to weed out any traces of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion by Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. The photograph was marked for removal because it prominently features the name of the aircraft: Enola Gay, named for the pilot Colonel Paul Tibbetts’s mother. 

The Associated Press published a database Thursday of thousands of images marked for deletion. While some of the photographs were still visible Thursday, it’s not clear if they will remain so. One official told the AP that close to 100,000 files could be deleted as part of the Pentagon’s latest purge. 

It’s not surprising that the sweep for DEI has consequently targeted the records and achievements of women and minorities in the military, removing mentions of Women’s History Month and Black History Month. One collection of images titled “Women’s History Month: All-female crew supports warfighters” saw its main page removed, though one photograph of an all-female C-17 crew remained. Another photograph titled “Engineering pioneer remembered during Black History Month” was deleted, as well. 

Other photographs swept up in the purge included those of service members with the last name Gay, war heroes such as Marine Corps World War II Medal of Honor recipient Private First Class Harold Gonsalves, and a photograph of a group of Army Corps biologists, who appeared to have earned their spot on the chopping block because they were collecting data about fish including, among other things, their gender.

Online, people weren’t at all impressed by the Pentagon’s thoughtless CTRL-F style of searching for woke.

Former Pentagon spokesperson Chris Meagher called the report “bonkers” in a post on X Thursday. 

Rick Pearson, a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, called the Pentagon’s purge “complete lunacy and literally an attempt to whitewash history” in a post on X.

“Republicans spent years complaining about cancel culture and then took office and banned photos of the Enola Gay because it has the word gay in it,” posted Skyler Johnson, a candidate for New York State Senate. 

“These fuckers are bigots and fucking idiots too,” wrote Army veteran Fred Wellman, who hosts the podcast On Democracy. 

“What a piece of shit you are @SecDef,” he added in a second post. 

The president’s ruthless back-and-forth on enforcing sweeping tariffs against Canada and Mexico is starting to frustrate his MAGA allies.

Last month, Trump announced he would impose a 25 percent tariff on goods from America’s closest neighbors. Two days later, he backtracked, giving Canada and Mexico a one-month delay. On March 4, the tariffs went into effect, sparking retaliatory tariffs from Canada, as well as outcry from America’s Big Three automakers.

Two days later, Trump directed another one-month pause for goods that met his 2020 trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which a White House official told CNBC covered roughly 50 percent of Mexican imports and 38 percent of Canadian imports. And then, in an interview that aired Friday, Trump said the tariffs could go higher than 25 percent.

As a result, the last week saw drastic market fluctuations, with the stock market tumbling as the tariffs went into effect. The Dow dropped 670 points, and by the end of the week, Republican lawmakers were fed up.

“Almost every industry in Kentucky has come to me and said, ‘It will hurt our industry and push up prices of homes, cars,’ and so, I’m gonna continue to argue against tariffs,” Senator Rand Paul told CNN on Thursday.

Senator Thom Tillis agreed that the administration should back off the tariffs if they were hurting constituents.

“When we start losing, you back off. There’s such a thing as strategic retreat,” Tillis told the network. “At the end of the day, I think we have more leverage than any other nation. But we gotta be smart. And we don’t have all the leverage.”

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy told Fox Business he was “worried” about the tariffs, adding that the president should “recalibrate” if the levies start to cause inflation—while insisting that he’s not doubting Trump’s leadership.

“I’m not saying that tariffs are going to cause inflation. President Trump did them in his first term and they didn’t,” Kennedy said. “I’m saying that we just don’t know. We’re in very obscure territory. We’re in uncharted waters. I think if the tariffs do start to cause inflation, I think the president will back away from them.”

Among other tariff proposals, Trump has enforced a 10 percent tariff hike on Chinese goods. That momentarily caused a panic in February for online retailers as the postal service placed a ban on Chinese packages, which it lifted days later. Casting China as a “bulwark of stability” against a backdrop of Trump-induced chaos, the Asian nation’s top diplomat Wang Yi said that China would “definitely, resolutely counter” America’s tariffs.

Donald Trump’s attempt to take over the National Labor Relations Board hit a snag from a federal judge Thursday.

Trump’s firing of Democratic board member Gwynne A. Wilcox was ruled unlawful by U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell, who ordered Wilcox’s immediate reinstatement and for her to serve out the remainder of her five-year term on the board, which began on September 6, 2023.

In her ruling, Howell wrote that the Constitution “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king—the President included—and not just in name only.

“The President does not have the authority to terminate members of the National Labor Relations Board at will, and his attempt to fire plaintiff from her position on the Board was a blatant violation of the law,” Howell said.

“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,” Howell added.

Wilcox filed the lawsuit last month after Trump fired her and the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, a fellow Biden appointee, leaving the board unable to function without a quorum. In a speech after the hearing Thursday, Wilcox said, “I’m ready to get back to work.”

“It’s not just about me, but I’m glad to be the face of this fight,” Wilcox said.

Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of the right have long targeted the NLRB, and are in fact trying to get the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional and dismantle it with backing from corporations including Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s. For now, at least, the NLRB is still around, with long legal fights ahead to save it as well as Wilcox’s position.

Just hours after he rolled back tariffs on Mexico, the president announced Canada will also not pay tariffs on any products that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, until April 2. It’s Trump’s third flip on tariffs in 72 hours.

He signed an executive order Thursday solidifying the one-month tariff delay on products from both countries.

On Tuesday, Trump implemented 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a disastrous move that plummeted financial markets and prompted retaliatory actions from both U.S. trading partners.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded aggressively, immediately implementing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods and condemning Trump’s betrayal of a longtime ally.

“Every country is very aware that if the American government is willing to do this to their own closest ally, neighbor, and friend, everyone is vulnerable to a trade war,” Trudeau said in a press conference on Tuesday, bypassing Trump and instead speaking directly to the American people.

“Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk at the thousands of workplaces that succeed because of materials from Canada, or because of consumers in Canada, or both.”

Trump reacted to Trudeau’s address with hostility, and yet again suggested all of Canada’s problems could be solved by becoming the fifty-first American state. His dislike for Trudeau seemingly influenced his decision-making Thursday morning, when he initially retracted tariffs only on Mexico “out of respect” for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, but not for Canada. Trump on Wednesday also granted a one-month exemption to U.S. automobile companies.

Unsurprisingly, the president has changed his mind yet again, drawing out a trade war that will have disastrous economic consequences.