Rubio declares South African ambassador to US 'persona non grata' over Trump comments

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared the South African ambassador for US Ebrahim Lasor “Persona Non Grata,” and has accused his recent comments about President Trump of being a “racial politician.”

“The US ambassadors for South Africa are no longer welcome in our great power,” Rubio said Friday. post Social Platform X. “Emrahim Rathor is a race-playing politician who hates America and hates @potus. We have nothing to argue with him, so he is considered Persona Non Grata.”

In the same post, Rubio shared a link In an article from the right-wing news outlet Breitbart detailing Rasool's comments on the Mapungubwe Institute (Misttra) think tank in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In a video address to think tanks, LaSaul accused Trump of leading the “white supremacist movement” both at home and abroad.

“So, it's the supremacist attack on the incumbent, we see it in the domestic politics of the US, the Magazine movement, the great American movement. It shows not only the supremacist instincts, but also very clear data showing the huge demographic changes in the US, where voter elections in the US are predicted to be 48% white.

“And that needs to be taken into consideration. And I think there's data to support you, for example, that this wall is being built, going to the deportation movement,” South African diplomat said, in order to understand instinctive, naturalist, racist. I said.

Hill reached out to the State Department in Washington and the South African Embassy for comments.

Calling a foreign diplomat persona a non-grata is a strong responsibilities that leads to civil servants being forced to leave the country.

Lasor was Washington's South African ambassador from 2010 to 2015. He returned to serve again earlier this year.

Rubio's responsibilities come as relations between South Africa and the United States have deteriorated.

Trump signed an executive order in early February to suspend aid to South Africa. He struck the country for seizing “an agricultural property of minority Africans without compensation.”

African countries signed the law in January, highlighting Trump's complaints about South Africa, called the expropriation law, allowing the government to take land without being deemed “fair, fair and in the public interest.”

At the time of signing the order, Trump accused the South African government of “confiscating the land and treating a certain class of people very badly.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other national officials push back Trump's claims. Ramaphosa said the law was “not a means of confiscation, but a constitutionally mandatory legal process that ensures public access to the land in a constitutionally guided and in a fair and fair manner.”

A few days before Trump wrote an order to suspend aid to South Africa, Rubio said he would skip Johannesburg's G20 summit, claiming that South Africa is “doing something very bad.”

“Expropriation of private property. Use the G20 to promote “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” In other words, Day and climate change,” Rubio said at the time.

Earlier this month, Trump said he is offering a quick path to US citizenship for South African farmers. The president said some of them were being treated badly, and once again accused the government of “confiscating their land and farms, much worse than that.”

South Africa and the US relations have reached “the lowest point,” according to Patrick Gaspard, a former US ambassador to South Africa and the US. He is currently the president of the Liberal Center, an American Progressive Think Tank.

“There are so many problems to not try to repair this partnership,” he said. I wrote it Friday at X