OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
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.
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.https://t.co/mnUnwGOQdx
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) March 14, 2025
“And that the possibility of a majority of minorities is looming on the horizon. And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things, I think that there’s data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement, et cetera et cetera. So I think I’d mention that,” he added.
“It’s no accident that Elon Musk has involved himself in UK politics, and elevated a Nigel Farage and the Reform movement, in much the same way that he was instructed that on his way to the Munich security summit, Vice President Vance addressed the Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] to strengthen them in their election campaign,” the banned South African diplomat droned on.
“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 embattled white communities,” he said
“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,” Rasool added.
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Rasool said that his nation could lead the pushback to Trump’s alleged white supremacism, since the country was “the historical antidote to supremacism.”
Rasool also has a public history of supporting Hamas. He has struggled to gain traction in Washington, DC, according to Semafor, which noted that he is being “frozen out” by key players.