President Donald Trump plans to nominate a MAGA pundit as ambassador to South Africa, according to the Congressional website.
L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Media Research Center, a watchdog group targeting media outlets for alleged liberal bias, was initially nominated to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, but his nomination was withdrawn yesterday.
The relationship between the U.S. and South Africa has severely deteriorated since Trump took office in January.
Trump recently expelled Ebrahim Rasool, the South African Ambassador to the U.S., for saying that the MAGA movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct.”
In February, he signed an executive order cutting all funding to the country, citing opposition to a South African law meant to address apartheid-era racial injustices.
He said the law discriminates against the country’s Afrikaner minority, which led the white supremacist regime until 1994, and announced refugee status for the ethnic group.
Trump’s billionaire advisor Elon Musk, who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa, has long attacked the country’s government, claiming without evidence that it is promoting the genocide of white minorities.
On Saturday, he wrote on X, “Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pushed back on Musk’s claims Monday, saying South Africans “should not allow events beyond our shores to divide us or turn us against each other.”
“In particular, we should challenge the completely false narrative that our country is a place in which people of a certain race or culture are being targeted for persecution,” Ramaphosa said.
The Trump administration has also criticized the South African government for bringing a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza and for its close relationship with Iran.
Bozell is a staunch defender of Israel, posting a fundraising appeal on his media watchdog’s website after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Once a fierce Trump critic, Bozell slammed him as “the greatest charlatan of them all” in the National Review’s 2016 “Against Trump” issue. In recent years, however, the lifelong conservative has become a MAGA convert.
Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was convicted of assaulting law enforcement officials during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He was released after Trump issued his blanket pardon for convicted Jan. 6 rioters.
Bozell will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
