For Trump, ignorance about Africa is a joking matter
President also claims he cut $8m at a seemingly nonexistent LGBTQI+ program in Lesotho
LGBTQ rights advocates and the foreign affairs minister of the southern African nation of Lesotho blasted U.S. President Donald Trump for using the nation as a punchline in his recent speech to Congress.
By Greg Owen
The nation of Lesotho in Southern Africa clapped back Wednesday following President Donald Trump’s putdown of the country of 2.3 million people in his marathon 100-minute address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.
Trump defended his sweeping cuts to foreign aid by the now-shuttered USAID agency by saying it included “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho.”
Waiting a beat, he added, “Which nobody has ever heard of,” earning laughs from Vice President JD Vance and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, seated behind him, and Republican allies throughout the chamber.
It was a one-two anti-diversity punch, insulting both a sovereign Black nation and the greater LGBTQ+ community at the same time.
And the funding claim, according to Lesotho’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group, was false.
“We are literally not receiving grants from the US,” a spokesperson for People’s Matrix told AFP.
“We have no idea of the allocation of eight million dollars. We do not know who received or is going to receive that money.”
About $120 million was spent on “health and population” programs in Lesotho last year, according to a U.S. government inventory of foreign assistance, including $43.5 million on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts.
The site does not list any financial support for LGBTQ+ rights in the country.
In February, Trump pulled out of the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, a collection of countries actively supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ and intersex people globally.
Lesotho’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said it was “shocking” to hear Trump “refer to another sovereign state in that manner.”
“To my surprise, ‘the country that nobody has heard of’ is the country where the U.S. has a permanent mission,” Mpotjoane told AFP. “Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the U.S. has an embassy here and [there are] a number of U.S. organizations we’ve accommodated here in Maseru,” the country’s capital.
“We did not expect a head of state to refer to another sovereign nation in such a manner,” he said.
The US has an embassy in Maseru, and American Peace Corps volunteers have served for decades in the small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa.
Lesotho also has one of the highest HIV rates in the world, with one in four residents testing positive last year.
Since 2006, the U.S. government has committed more than $630 million to HIV/AIDS treatment efforts in Lesotho through PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
“We are not taking this matter lightly,” added the foreign minister, who told Trump to expect an official protest letter to Washington.
Lesotho journalist Kananelo Boloetse fired off his own scathing message to Trump on Wednesday.
“Ever heard of Kingdom in the Sky? Guess not, too busy golfing to notice,” he posted to X.
“Lesotho’s the only country in the world entirely above 1,000 meters elevation, higher than your approval ratings ever got,” he wrote, adding: “We’re here, we’re proud, and we’re not your punchline.”
