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A Bonfire of the Vanities at the White House – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

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May 21, 2025
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A Bonfire of the Vanities at the White House - The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

One of my favorite films is The Bonfire of the Vanities, a 1990 adaptation of the 1987 Tom Wolfe novel of the same name, with Tom Hanks and Michelle Pfeiffer heading up an all-star cast. The film, as did the novel, utterly skewered the venality of politicians and journalists for embracing false narratives either out of stupidity or cynicism, in a flamboyant and entertaining fashion arguably not matched since.

Incidentally, the two Mike Holman novels I’ve written are something of an homage to Wolfe; which I’m mentioning because I’ve just begun writing a third one that will serialize here at The American Spectator this summer.

In both of my novels, there are a few scenes where the bad guys find themselves horribly and deliciously exposed by the truth, something Wolfe was very proficient in putting on display in his own work. There was this famous scene from the movie version of TBOV, in which Hanks, playing the lead character, a Wall Street titan brought low by an allegation that he’d run over a promising black youth and on trial for the crime, sneaks an exonerating audiotape into the courtroom and explodes the prosecution’s case against him:

All hell breaks loose after that, particularly when Morgan Freeman, as the judge, throws out the case against Hanks’ character. Someone in the crowd calls Freeman a racist, and that stops the show — allowing for a little bit of editorializing and a message to the audience:

I bring all this up because what happened at the White House on Wednesday was very reminiscent of that famous movie scene.

As I watched it, all I could think about is how much Mike Holman would have liked it.

If you haven’t seen the video, here is the entire thing:

At issue, obviously, is the treatment of the white South Africans by its hardcore socialist government and also by its radical political majority population, something that is almost inexplicably controversial here in America now that the Trump administration has begun to grant asylum to Afrikaners seeking refugee status.

For example, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified earlier this week in front of a Senate committee, he was set upon by a pair of Democrats over the asylum question. Here was Chris Van Hollen’s assault on Rubio:

…and here was Tim Kaine’s effort…

We’re talking about, so far, only 60 or so people, and you see how vitriolic the Democrat Party’s luminaries are becoming over the question of allowing Afrikaners (I’m using Afrikaners as a term to describe all of the white South Africans).

Last week a column in this space described the plight of the Afrikaners and the extreme threat they face from criminals and radicals alike within that country’s political class and population in general, something we’re now being told is groundless and made up.

And now, just after Ramaphosa dropped a Zelensky-esque “Trump must listen” speech in response to a question about accusations of anti-white genocide, Trump made him sit through a four-and-a-half-minute video of South African politicians stoking murderous racism against the Afrikaners.

Ramaphosa looked like someone was sticking him repeatedly with something sharp and said nothing until the end of the video, which showed a roadside monument — a long double row of crosses — to farmers who have been murdered in his country, and then he asked Trump where it was.

Disastrous would be a word to describe that reaction, as it made Ramaphosa out to be utterly out of touch with a problem the American president is voicing primary concern for — just after he said that Trump needed to listen to the South Africans.

And it got worse when Retief Goosen, the champion South African golfer, told the story of his family farm and the rampant theft and violence plaguing their operations.

The photo op went on for an hour and the plight of the Afrikaners came up again and again. It had to be agonizing for the South African president, who has repeatedly denied his government has a policy of expropriating land from white farmers without compensation and did so again — only to have Trump repeat the statement.

And members of Ramaphosa’s delegation attempted to deflect from the genocide narrative by saying that the problem of violent crime isn’t restricted to whites — as if that casts South Africa in a better light — and then proceeded to beg Trump for things like surveillance drones and Starlink internet for rural police stations.

As if this is something South Africa has to have the help of the American government to procure.

It was a remarkable bit of transparency. It was a press avail like you’ve never seen before, save for the one Volodymyr Zelensky found himself in earlier this year, and you might never see again.

Then again, hopefully we’ll see such press conferences on a regular basis, because for all of the scrutiny put on Trump, the U.S. government, and Americans as a whole by the rest of the world, it’s nice to see someone else on the griddle who deserves it. Ramaphosa might not be a psychotic racist on the level of his political opponent Julius Malema (he’s the one running around the country dancing and chanting “Shoot The Boer” in front of large soccer-stadium crowds), but there is little doubt that the African National Congress, the party he leads, wouldn’t meet an American standard for a civil rights record.

And Trump held his feet to the fire on that.

But while Ramaphosa certainly was given the hot-seat treatment in exchange for whatever goodies of favorable trade arrangements or economic aid he’s seeking from Trump, the biggest losers in Wednesday’s crucible were the American media.

Again and again, Trump indicted the legacy corporate press for refusing to cover the plight of the Afrikaners and implied the clear anti-white racism inherent in that refusal — and when a reporter from NBC News attempted to change the subject by bringing up the picayune issue of the Boeing jet the Qatari government has offered to donate for use as an Air Force One plane while the company builds the next model, he gave the man and his network a public tongue-lashing so severe as to perhaps end his career.

The response was predictable:

And there was this…

What happened on Wednesday was that Trump shined a very bright light on something none of these people want to discuss, and this time the cockroaches didn’t scatter.

They weren’t smart enough to scatter. This bunch just stood there slackjawed — or more to the point, they kept on doing what they were doing in the dark.

It was a clarifying moment.

Tom Wolfe would have been proud.

And I’ll have to work very hard to top this in that next Mike Holman novel I’ve just begun writing.

READ MORE:

The Cancerous Lies of the Corporate Joe Biden

Five Quick Things: America Needs Despondent Democrats, and We Have Them

The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization



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