Media Denies Christian Genocide in Response to Trump’s Threat of Military Action in Nigeria | The American Spectator

On the night of June 13, 2025, armed Fulani herdsmen descended on a Catholic farming community in Nigeria. By the time the night was over, more than 200 Christians — men, women, and children — lay dead amidst the ruins of their burnt-down homes.

And that incident is just one amongst thousands of targeted killings of Christians by jihadist herdsmen.

If you would believe the perspective of much of the liberal media over the past decade, the mass killing of Christians taking place in Nigeria is just part of a mutual “conflict” in which Christian farmers have scrapped with Muslim indigenous herders over land. (RELATED: Off the Radar: Christian Genocide in Africa)

The fact that the herdsmen who carried out the mayhem of June 13, 2025, did so while shouting “Allahu Akbar” is apparently not sufficient evidence that this is in fact a religiously motivated genocide, one that has resulted in the deaths of 125,000 Christians over the past 15 years, according to some reports. Others put the number closer to 50,000. Numerous moderate Muslims have also been killed by the Islamic radicals. (RELATED: The Left Ignores Nigeria’s Suffering Christians While Proclaiming to Be Perfect Humanitarians)

On Sunday, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. Department of War should prepare for “possible action” in Nigeria in response to the unimpeded killing of Christians. (RELATED: What Is America’s Role in Africa?)

“They’re killing record numbers of Christians in Nigeria. They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers,” Trump said. “We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Of course, the Washington Post responded to Trump’s threats by trotting out the familiar claim that the genocide of Christians in Nigeria is in fact just a mutual “conflict.” The Post’s Rachel Chason and Abiodun Jamiu said in their Nov. 2, 2025, article, “Farmer-herder conflicts affect the central states.”

Ah, yes, nothing to see here, just “conflicts” that “affect” — by some unknown force — the region.

But it gets worse. The targeting of Christians with violence is only “alleged,” according to the Post’s Chason and Jamie.

“In a post on Truth Social, Trump singled out the plight of Christians allegedly targeted by violence in Nigeria,” they wrote in the Post.

Allegedly?

Allegedly?

Do we not have the evidence of the 40 to 50 Christian farmers slaughtered by a Fulani herdsman this April?

Or the evidence of the 140 Christian farmers murdered by Fulani herdsmen in coordinated attacks across Nigeria’s Plateau State in the lead-up to Christmas in 2023?

Or the evidence of the 40 Catholics murdered after Mass at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo in 2022?

And this wasn’t just an offhand “allegedly” thrown out into the article by the Washington Post. Chason and Jamie used the line twice, also saying, “Trump also warned of aid cuts over alleged attacks on Christians.”

The two continued to cast doubt on whether the killings of Christians were religiously motivated. They quoted a researcher, Malik Samuel, who “denied that there had been a targeted campaign to kill Christians specifically.” On X, Samuel has called the claims of religious genocide against Christians in Nigeria “nonsensical” and said it is important to “categorically deny” such allegations (in between posting support for the claim that Israel is “starving” children in Gaza).

The Washington Post said that Trump’s threats had prompted “confusion” in Nigeria and left many “baffled.”

But many Christians in Nigeria know exactly what is going on here.

A few years ago, I spoke with the Anglican archbishop of the Jos Ecclesiastical Province in Nigeria’s Plateau State, Marcus Ibrahim. When I told him that many in the media claim that the conflict between the Fulani and Christian farmers is one of mutual economic conflict, he was outraged by such claims.

“It’s founded on attacks and killing, it’s founded on jihad. They want a jihad in Nigeria. All of these attacks are religiously motivated,” Ibrahim told me.

Ibrahim pointed out that three churches in Plateau State had recently been burned to the ground. The systematic burning of churches, after all, does not exactly reflect a nonreligious motivation. Neither does the repeated kidnapping of seminarians and priests.

One Christian religious leader I spoke with in Nigeria even emphasized that he tells his people not to respond with violence against the Fulani herdsmen.

The Washington Post is not the only media outlet to have made this claim of mutual “conflict.”

In 2018, the New York Times described the situation in Nigeria as “farmers and herdsmen vying for land, leading to bloody battles.” The violence, they admitted, was “exacerbated” by religion. The Times has only doubled down since. In its first reaction to Trump’s comments on Sunday, the Times described the fact that Christians are facing violence as “a claim made by some evangelical groups and U.S. lawmakers.” Then, on Monday, Pranav Baskar wrote for the Times that “Mr. Trump did not specify which attacks on Christians he was referring to, and did not cite any evidence for the claim, made in recent weeks by several of his political allies, that Christians are being targeted in Nigeria.” (RELATED: Ted Cruz and the Specter of ‘Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner’)

Evidently, the massacre of 200 Christians in a single attack just this summer was too hard for Baskar to research.

For Baskar and the New York Times, this couldn’t possibly be a targeted genocide against Christians; it has to be mutual “clashes.” He wrote, “There have also been repeated deadly clashes in central Nigeria between herdsmen and farmers, as a battle for scarce resources stirs long-held tensions over religion and ethnicity.”

CNN did better in responding to Trump’s comments, stating, “Both Christians and Muslims … have been victims of attacks by radical Islamists.” While this underplays the fact that the violence against Christians is religiously motivated, it at least acknowledges that Christians have been the victims of killings by Islamic extremists. No “alleged” killings here. CNN quoted the leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria, John Joseph Hayab, who agreed with Trump’s assessment of “systematic killings of Christians” and said that he himself had “presided over numerous mass burials of slain Christians.” (RELATED: Nigeria: The Most Dangerous Place To Be a Christian)

More than 7,000 Christians were massacred in Nigeria through July of this year. The fact that so many in the mainstream media insist upon denying this reality is shocking. How high does the death toll have to rise before our “papers of record” acknowledge what is happening? Unfortunately, the Nigerian government denies the reality of the genocide just as much as the media does.

The mass blindness to this genocide just proves that intervention by the U.S. government to stop this violence is necessary. As John Mac Ghlionn said in The American Spectator’s pages, “military pressure, economic sanctions, and diplomatic consequences” need to be applied in order to stop this persecution of Christians. Good on the Trump administration for finally beginning to apply this pressure.

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