An African journalist who engaged in a verbal tussle with White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki earlier this week over President Biden’s sweeping 8-country travel ban told Fox News on Friday that Biden “disrespected” his home continent and that former President Trump would have been labeled a racist if he acted that way.
Simon Ateba, the chief White House correspondent for Today News Africa, told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that Biden unjustly banned travel from half a dozen majority-Black African countries despite there being no evidence of the new omicron coronavirus variant there.
During Thursday’s briefing, Ateba scuffled with Psaki as he tried to take the floor to tell her she was factually incorrect in her remarks about African viral spread. Psaki instead replied by reprimanding him.
While people from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana were blocked from traveling to the U.S., Ateba told host Jesse Watters that only two –the latter two – had confirmed cases of the new variant.
“The travel ban was built on a lie,” Ateba told Fox News. “The president on November 26 banned 8 African countries. Only 2 of those countries had any case of the omicron variant.”
Ateba, a native of Cameroon according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, went on to question the supposed science behind Biden’s ban, pointing to Namibia, a small country on the continent’s Atlantic coast.
The nation of 2.5 million people registered only 400 cases of COVID-19 since the virus’ inception, he said, but yet Biden essentially punished them anyway.
