Trump Ambush 2.0

By Alex Miller

On Wednesday, 21 May 2025, US President Donald J. Trump followed up his earlier Oval Office Tag Team smackdown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a tirade of baseless accusations and abuse against South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.  Mr. Trump took advantage of an Oval Office press availability to promote debunked conspiracy theories about a White Genocide occurring in South Africa, chastising President Ramaphosa for allowing it to happen.

The insults began from the jump, when Trump introduced his South African counterpart as someone who was “in some circles really respected, in other circles, a little bit less respected.”  He proceeded to cite incidents of what he characterized as racially-based murder of white Afrikaner landowning farmers by blacks.  As Ramaphosa politely pushed back on the claims, stating that while criminal activity certainly existed in South Africa, it was mostly directed at blacks, Trump ordered the lights turned down, a large flatscreen TV was wheeled in, and the leader of the free world subjected his guest to a video detailing conspiracy theories of the supposed White Genocide in progress.

An Oval Office interview used to be among the most coveted arrows in the US State Department’s quiver, but with ambushes like this becoming the rule rather than the exception, one wonders how they’ll fill their dance card.

What accounts for this change?  Quite possibly, dementia.  With Neptune’s recent entry into Aries, Donald Trump is beginning a period of the planet which rules insanity, deterioration and altered mental states opposing (180 degrees) its natal place (5 Libra).  Everyone experiences this transit in its exactitude at about age 82, but the effects begin several years earlier, as the aspect begins to come into orb.  Many seniors begin to develop dementia or diminished memory and mental capacity at about this age, and Trump, just weeks shy of his 79^th birthday, is likely no exception.

The situation is complicated by the square (90 degrees) Neptune is simultaneously making to Trump’s natal Mercury (8 Cancer), ruling the mind, communication and self-expression.  Clouded, fuzzy thinking is often an effect of this combination (which Trump enjoys from birth, with Mercury squared Neptune), as well as susceptibility to conspiracy theories and an inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.  Lying and deception are other common outworkings of this pairing.

In Trump’s case, there is a robust personal connection via the conjunction of asteroid Donn (for Donald, at 7 Cancer) with Mercury, causing strong self-identification with his mental gifts.  Trump is fond of describing himself as a “very stable genius,” often touting his amazing mental prowess and intelligence, a true legend in his own mind.  Politics becomes involved with the opposition from Mercury/Donn to asteroid Whitehouse (4 Capricorn), forming a T-Square with Neptune (and now with transit Neptune involved, a Grand Cross).  Trump (Donn) has always seen populism (Mercury) as his path to the Oval Office (Whitehouse), and utilized deception and religious fanaticism (both Neptune-ruled) to attain this end.

But now the worm may be turning, and the stable genius is looking less and less stable by the day.

Trump has taken to heart the plight of the supposed Afrikaner victims, months ago offering them asylum in the US, while denying entry to immigrants from verifiably dangerous countries, and removing or ignoring protected status from others already resident in the US.  In March he deplored the South African government, who he alleged was treating the Afrikaners “terribly,” offering them “safety” in the US and a “rapid pathway to citizenship.”  On May 12^th, 59 white South African farmers took him up on his offer, and were greeted at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC by administration officials.  Trump has now followed up this support with a public excoriation of their president in the Oval Office on their behalf.

Exactly why this issue strikes so close to home for Trump can be seen in a celestial pattern active at this time, another T-Square involving asteroid White (12 Aquarius) opposed a conjunction of asteroid Pretoria (12 Leo) and Mars (15 Leo), with an exact pairing of asteroids Farmer and Donn (14 Taurus) on its fulcrum, squared to the polarity.  This has prompted Trump (Donn) to personally identify with and champion (Mars) the cause of the white (White) farmers (Farmer) being attacked (also Mars) in South Africa (Pretoria, its administrative capital).  It’s a stunning “as above, so below” recitative of the music of the spheres in terrestrial parlance.

And sometimes, political motivation is just that simple.

Cover Image Credit:  Farmer Donn drawn by Craiyon, South African flag image by jorono from Pixabay; combined by author

Celestial graphic created by author