Kevin O’Leary insists that Trump granting refugee status to white South Africans ‘has nothing to do with race’

Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary claimed that Donald Trump granting refugee status to white South Africans “has nothing to do with race,” even though the president claimed that Afrikaner farmers were facing “genocide” because they “happen to be white.”

The MAGA-boosting Canadian businessman also told Fox News on Tuesday that he had no idea “why this particular group gets all this focus.” O’Leary added that “every administration has its own policy” on immigration and that he doesn’t “understand this debate at all” over white South Africans getting fast-tracked to citizenship while Trump shuts out most other refugee admissions.

Following his vow in February to cut off all funding to South Africa and “resettle” white Afrikaners in America over a new land expropriation law, Trump announced on Monday that 59 white South African “refugees” were en route to the United States. The president also made it clear he was echoing the debunked “white genocide” conspiracy theory that alleges white farmers in South Africa are being targeted and killed en masse.

“It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about,” Trump declared in the Oval Office. “It's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but 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.”

Despite the president’s claims, which have been amplified in recent years by South African-born “first buddy” Elon Musk and right-wing media figures such as Tucker Carlson, there’s no evidence that white farmers are facing a spike in violence and murders. Despite the prevalence of online misinformation that tends to center around a few high-profile cases, it’s estimated that roughly 50 farmers, from different racial backgrounds, were killed last year in a country that recorded over 19,000 murders.

Additionally, a South African court ruled in late February that “white genocide” in the country was “clearly imagined and not real” after blocking a bequest to a white supremacist organization. The group says it enables resistance against “the promised slaughter of whites” in South Africa and “the theft of their property.”

During an appearance on Fox News midday panel show Outnumbered, which featured the majority of the hosts criticizing the “liberal” media’s reaction and “hypocrisy” over the so-called refugees, O’Leary insisted that any outrage was misplaced.

“I don’t understand this. Every administration has their own policy on immigration,” the venture capitalist declared. “The previous administration believed in open borders, this one believes in closed borders.”

Describing the refugee asylum process as “almost like a pardon system,” O’Leary said that “this happens in every administration” and “any president can do this.” Likening the white South Africans to the “huge amount of Irish people” that migrated to the United States in the 19th century, he said “there was a reason for that” before reiterating that this was much ado about nothing.

“Whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know, but it happened decades ago. Presidents make decisions on who they want let into the country. It’s been done generation after generation,” he concluded. “I don’t know why this particular group gets all this focus. It has nothing to do with race or religion. These people wanted to come to America, and Trump accepted them. It’s over.”

When Trump first announced he was cutting off funding to South Africa, he pointed to a recently passed land law and said the government was “confiscating land” and “treating certain classes of people very badly.” Musk has called the Expropriation Act an “openly racist” law and deemed a Black nationalist South African party of “actively promoting white genocide.”

The law in question, which has been challenged in court, is akin to eminent domain in the United States in that it allows the government to seize land from private parties for the “public interest” without compensation. The Expropriation Act, however, notes that it would only take farmland if negotiations for monetary settlement fall through, and no farms or land have been taken so far under the law.

Despite it being three decades since the end of apartheid, which saw South Africa’s white minority government preventing Blacks from having fundamental rights or owning land, white Afrikaners still disproportionately control the nation’s farms. While white people make up just 7.3 percent of the population, they own 72 percent of South Africa’s farmland.