Liberals rage after Trump welcomes white refugees to US: 'Farce and a sham'

Liberal activists and media personalities have long championed America's acceptance of refugees, especially from terrorist hotbeds like Afghanistan and Syria. They characterized criticism of this acceptance — particularly that born of concerns about national security threats — as racist, xenophobic, and un-Christian, and framed the Trump administration's targeting of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program earlier this year as immoral.

Support for bringing in persecuted people from afar suddenly crumbled Monday after the Trump administration welcomed 59 white Afrikaners at Dulles International Airport under the URAP.

MSNBC's "Deadline White House," for instance, was abuzz with condemnations, ascriptions of collective guilt, and racially charged commentary.

Rick Stengel, a former official in the Obama administration, told a sullen Nicolle Wallace that the admission of a handful of South African farmers — whom major political parties in Pretoria gleefully sing about butchering in packed stadiums — was "deeply and morally wrongheaded and repulsive. These are the descendants of the people who created the most diabolical system of white supremacy in human history, apartheid."

'It's taking places away from refugees who are really being crushed.'

While acknowledging that the landed Afrikaner families, which include numerous young children, were not directly responsible for apartheid, Stengel suggested they were nevertheless beneficiaries of racism and themselves racists. Meanwhile, over at NBC News, talking head Andrea Mitchell alternatively suggested that young children also bore responsibility for apartheid.

After intimating the white farmers own too much land — a perceived issue South Africa's socialist-run regime appears keen to rectify with its new land-confiscation law — Stengel stated, "There's no injustice here. As you mentioned, it's taking places away from refugees who are really being crushed by authoritarian governments and military governments."

RELATED: Episcopal Church kills government partnership over request to resettle white Afrikaner refugees

"It's just a farce and a sham," continued Stengel. "It's like a Batman movie or something where all the bad guys get collected under one roof."

African American studies professor Eddie Glaude, another one of Wallace's apoplectic guests, suggested the administration's supposed white nationalism was evidenced by the admission of a football-team's worth of South African farmers.

Former and current Democrats similarly rent their garments and ran with this narrative.

Former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) suggested to MSNBC that the problem is the Afrikaners' race, noting that their admission demonstrates the Trump administration's "disdain for people of color."

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), fresh off trying to bring a Salvadoran MS-13 affiliate accused of domestic abuse and human trafficking back into the U.S., similarly condemned the acceptance of the Afrikaners, claiming they do not need refugee status and their acceptance was part of a "sick global apartheid policy."

The aversion to bringing in white refugees does not appear to be limited to Democrats and their friends in the media.

'Afrikaners fleeing persecution are welcome in the United States.'

Blaze News previously reported that the Episcopal Migration Ministries, an arm of the Episcopal Church that has served as one of 10 agencies the U.S. government contracts to resettle refugees, announced Monday that it will not help white Afrikaners on account of the church's "steadfast commitment to racial justice."

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Sean Rowe, revealed in a letter to fellow Episcopalians that rather than resettle farmers from South Africa classified by the U.S. government as refugees, the EMM will end its contract with the federal government by the end of this fiscal year.

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

"Any religious group should support the plight of Afrikaners, who have been terrorized, brutalized, and persecuted by the South African government," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Blaze News. "The Afrikaners have faced unspeakable horrors and are no less deserving of refugee resettlement than the hundreds of thousands of others who were allowed into the United States during the past administration. President Trump has made it clear: refugee resettlement should be about need, not politics."

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President Donald Trump told reporters Monday, "It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place."

"Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white," continued Trump. "Whether they're white or black, makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday afternoon, "Afrikaners fleeing persecution are welcome in the United States. The South African government has treated these people terribly — threatening to steal their private land and subjected them to vile racial discrimination. The Trump Administration is proud to offer them refuge in our great country."

Editor's note: The article has been corrected to reflect that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Sean Rowe, not Sam Rowe.

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