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Claim: Viral social media posts claimed that former United States President Donald Trump made recent racist remarks against people of African descent and Arabs.
Verdict: False! The speech attributed to Mr Trump has been circulating the internet for a long time. Findings also showed that some parts of the speech were cut from other write-ups claimed to have come from former South African president P. W. Botha in 1985.
Full Text
Election seasons in any country impact the political landscape of other countries, regardless of their degree of influence. One of the world’s major powers, the United States of America, is set to elect a new president in November 2024. Major contenders include the current president, Joe Biden, and his Republican opponent, Donald Trump. The policies the winner implements usually have a far-reaching impact globally.
As such, Nigerians are showing keen interest in the build-up to the election. Expectedly, Mr Trump frequently appears among creators of misinformation. The character of the former president has been the subject of much disinformation. Some have been fact-checked here, here and here.
Recently, social media users shared a speech purportedly from Mr Trump, where he allegedly berated people of Arab descent, Nigerians and other nationalities in Africa. In the speech that has been forwarded repeatedly on WhatsApp platforms, Facebook and Twitter, Mr Trump allegedly explained why he hates Arabs and Africans, noting that whites are superior.
The speech further stated that Africans and Arabs are not skilled in any endeavour other than indulging in pleasurable activities that are unable to proffer solutions, unlike their white counterparts.
The speech partly reads: “They are good in nothing (sic) else but making noise, dancing, marrying many wives, alcoholism, witchcraft, indulging in sex, pretending in church, jealousy, fighting and complaining of bad leadership, without being able to take decisive action to remove the brigands from position (sic) of power.
“Let us all accept the fact that the black man is a symbol of poverty, mental inferiority, laziness and emotional incompetence. To make matters worse, he can do everything possible to defend his stupidity. Give them money for development, and they will fight and create hatred and enmity for themselves. Drill oil wells for them, and they will not have peace all the days of their life.
“See, for instance, what’s happening in Nigeria (a country blessed with abundant resources), Southern Sudan, Malawi, DRC, just to mention a few.
“Look at what is currently going on in the Nigeria National Assembly. Legislators amending the constitution to favour themselves at the expense of two (200) million Nigerians. The present administration now has (sic) no economic blueprint plan, rather than noise and false propaganda.”
It was further alleged that the former president described Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, as a dying man who is receiving treatment at a hospital in London, among other statements.
Quotes and comments on the posts show that many people believe the speech truly came from Mr Trump.
Verification
DUBAWA performed a keyword search to identify the source of the information. However, we found no information regarding the date of publication, the title of the event, or the venue where Mr Trump delivered the speech.
Rather, the keyword search showed that the speech was a collection of utterances from different articles combined and attributed to Donald Trump. Further investigation revealed that the viral speech was not recent. It had been making the rounds in the Nigerian social media space as far back as 2017, as seen here, here, here, and here.
DUBAWA observed that a part of the speech in which Mr Trump allegedly said White people are superior had been formerly attributed to the deceased South African President, the late P.W. Botha, in August 1985. It was said to be a reprint of the South African newspaper, Sunday Times, published on Aug 18, 1985.
In the paper, Botha was quoted as saying “Pretoria has been made by the White mind for the White man. We are not obliged in the least to try to prove to anybody and to the Blacks that we are superior people. We have demonstrated that to the Blacks in a thousand and one ways. The Republic of South Africa we know of today had not been created by wishful thinking.
“We do not pretend like other Whites that we like Blacks. The fact that Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings does not necessarily make them sensible human beings. Hedgehogs are not porcupines, and lizards are not crocodiles simply because they look alike. If God wanted us to be equal to the Blacks, he would have created us all of a uniform colour and intellect, but he created us differently…” The full transcript can also be found here.
A close observation showed that some parts had also been edited to make it appear like they had come from Mr Trump. The word Pretoria has been replaced with the US.
Mr Botha was a major player in the apartheid era in the country. He upheld white minorities and ignored the black majority. In the Rubicon address that sparked a nationwide debate and attracted international outrage, Mr Botha said he is “not prepared to lead White South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide.”
He also stressed the importance of the Whites in South Africa, saying if their influence is destroyed, the “country will drift into faction strife, chaos and poverty.”
However, in the speech, he did not describe blacks as non-humans. The quoted newspaper distanced itself from the alleged reprint, as seen here.
Some keywords in the speech purported to have been made by Mr Trump also showed that it had been edited to suit a narrative, particularly about Nigeria.
For instance, it included phrases describing Nigeria as “a great country, blessed with natural resources” which also referred to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari’s medical trips to London.
However, these statements are not included in the other variants of the post purported to have come from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as seen here and here. Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu has been criticised severally for racist statements targeted at Arabs and Africans.
Also, a part of the statement that describes Africans as lazy, only good at sex and thuggery, falsely attributed to Mr Trump as far back as 2015, had been debunked by Snopes.
This proves that the post is a copypasta: an internet slang for a block of text copied and pasted across the Internet by individuals through online forums and social networking websites.
It is not uncommon to see strings of texts posted online with the name of the purported author or speaker attached at the end of the text. DUBAWA has debunked such posts as seen here, here and here.
In addition, there are instances where the subjects have come out to clear their names about such utterances. This is one of the reasons DUBAWA encourages the public to verify information sent to them before resharing it through the DUBAWA Chatbot.
Conclusion
The viral speech attributed to Mr Trump is false. The same narrative has been attributed to several political figures in the past.
