South African President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump had agreed that the United States should attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in November, after meeting last week.
In a newsletter proclaiming his “successful working visit to the United States,” Ramaphosa stated: “President Trump agreed that the US should continue playing a key role in the G20, including attending the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg later this year, where South Africa will hand over the presidency of the G20 to the US.”
The White House has declined to comment thus far to confirm or deny Ramaphosa’s claims,
Trump has not committed publicly to attending the meeting in person, though he said in the Oval Office, in response to reporters’ questions, that it was important that the U.S. was “at” both the G7 and the G20.
South Africa currently leads the G20, which was founded in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis to bring industrialized and developing nations together to help coordinate economic policies and other issues.
The U.S. is set to take over the rotating presidency of the G20 after the summit in South Africa.
Earlier this year, amid deepening tensions with South Africa, Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a preliminary meeting of foreign ministers in South Africa over the latter’s new Expropriation Act. He also expressed strong disagreement with the theme South Africa had chosen for the G20 for the year — “solidarity, equality and sustainability” — saying that those were merely shorthand for “DEI and climate change.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
