President Donald Trump nominated conservative media watchdog founder Leo Brent Bozell III as his ambassador to South Africa, a country he had contentious relations with early in his second term.
Bozell is the founder of the conservative Media Research Center, a watchdog group that aims to expose liberal bias in the media. He was nominated as the CEO of the Agency for Global Media, but it was withdrawn on Monday, the same day the ambassador to South Africa nomination was sent to the Senate.
The nomination came as the Trump administration has taken aim at the South African government over its policies toward white citizens and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Trump signed an executive order last month stopping “aid or assistance to South Africa,” alleging a pattern of discrimination against the minority white Afrikaner population, including a 2024 law that enables “the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.” The South African government denied claims of discrimination.
The order also calls for the United States to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation” and says South African has taken “aggressive positions” toward the U.S. and its allies, including Israel in its war against Hamas.
The nomination of an ambassador to South Africa also came weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to the U.S., was “no longer welcome in our great country.” Rubio pointed to Rasool’s comments and said he was “a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates [Trump].”
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Rubio’s declaration of Rasool as persona non grata was a rare diplomatic move.
Bozell’s nomination will need to be approved by the Senate before he can assume the ambassadorship.
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