President Trump for the second time used a meeting with a major foreign leader to cater to his own base on Wednesday.

This time it was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who Trump used as a foil, just as he and Vice President Vance had hammered on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in late February.

The Ramaphosa meeting was not quite so stormy as the confrontation with Zelensky, which made instant global headlines. But it had plenty of tension. And it appeared just as much of a preplanned ambush, especially when Trump asked for the lights in the Oval Office to be lowered so he could show a video of incendiary remarks from South African politicians.

Trump referred to the speeches as coming from “officials,” a term that could be taken to imply the speakers were members of Ramaphosa’s government. They are not, as both the South African president and his agriculture minister, who was also present, sought to make clear.

Still, Trump seemed undeterred by those points, continuing to insist that the situation in South Africa is akin to an anti-white apartheid and that people who kill white farmers enjoy de facto immunity.

Ramaphosa and his colleagues tried as best as they could to push back on those assertions without getting into a Zelensky-style, flat-out argument with the U.S. president. They acknowledged that high levels of violence are a problem in South........

© The Hill