Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear late last week that the South African ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome.
On Friday, Rubio posted to social media platform X, calling Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool “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,” Rubio continued regarding Rasool as he linked to a Breitbart News article that reported disparaging comments the South African diplomat made about President Donald Trump.
The diplomat was expelled after he told those gathered for an event recent that Trump was leading a white supremacist movement around the world.
While addressing the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in Johannesburg, Rasool sought to clarify Trump’s recent foreign policy positions, specifically his opposition to South Africa’s property expropriation legislation and its alliances with Iran, Hamas, and other nations.
“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,” Rasool said, per Breitbart.
“So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” he continued.
