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On Monday, May 12, after illegally shuttering the US refuge program on his first day in office, Trump welcomed a planeload of white South Africans to the United States. “It’s a genocide taking place,” he falsely claimed in a press conference at the White House. “Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white.”
The bitter irony of this lie is that farmers are being killed by genocidal violence in Sudan, the Congo, and Gaza. But they all happen not to be white. Trump refuses to acknowledge the systemic violence that is real and is a legitimate basis for the credible fear of refugees who currently seek safe haven in the United States. Instead, he misuses the power of the office of the President of the United States to spread a lethal lie.
Just over a year ago, I preached a sermon to a group of American pastors who were grappling with the moral question student activists had raised by calling us to face the reality of genocide in Gaza. It didn’t matter who was in the White House, I said then. We had a moral obligation to hear the cry for life.
I’m sharing this message with you today because that moral obligation continues. It took an hour for me to say everything that needed to be said to address genocide authentically. We do not need bumperstickers. We need truth. I hope you’ll take time to listen.
But I share this full message with you today because preaching it clarified for me that genocide is always a political creation. Groups of people do not slaughter their neighbors apart from a campaign of lies about their neighbors, and these lies are always spread by politicians who think they can benefit from them.
Trump lies so often that it is easy to become numb to the consequences of his false statements. But this lie is not mere exaggeration. It is not simply bluster or political theater. It is deadly serious. And it demands a moral rebuke.
As we continue to keep a laser focus on the budget before Congress, I want to remind you that your Senators and your representative in the House hold the power of the purse. Trump has appointed officials in the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the Department of Justice who are not only willing to repeat his lies; they are also refusing to execute the laws passed by Congress and are misappropriating money allocated by Congress. This is not politics as usual. It is a moral crisis.
Whatever their political party, members of Congress have a duty to exercise their authority to halt any abuse of executive power. Yet rather than demand compliance, Congressional leadership has agreed to work with this rogue White House to pass a budget that would slash funding for essential, life-sustaining programs in order to give tax breaks to billionaires and more money to militarized attacks on immigrant communities and the war economy.
We are calling on all people of good will who oppose this immoral budget to join us for a mass Moral Monday in Washington, DC, on June 2. I hope you’ll plan to join us and help spread the word.

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