Donald Trump’s interest in South Africa reached a new level this month, as his administration made a dramatic exception to its opposition to refugees and welcomed a group of white South Africans. The president repeatedly insisted that their race was irrelevant, and that he’s really just a humanitarian concerned about “people in distress,” but the defense was literally unbelievable.

That said, as part of the Republican’s indefensible exception to his own anti-refugee policy, and the special treatment he afforded Afrikaners but not others who’d been forced to wait literally for years for resettlement assignments, Trump also made a variety of highly provocative — and highly dubious — claims about conditions in South Africa. It prompted the nation’s president to do what leaders often do in situations like these: He asked for a meeting so that he could provide the White House with accurate information that Trump apparently lacked.

With this in mind, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa got on a plane and made a very long trek across the Atlantic. After having seen how he was treated in the Oval Office, it’s hard not to wonder whether he regrets having made the effort. NBC News reported:

What started as a friendly first meeting between President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa quickly devolved after a reporter asked Trump about the U.S. decision to admit white South Africans as refugees. Trump falsely claimed that there was a genocide against white people in South Africa, which Ramaphosa and other South Africans have vigorously denied.

In late February, in one of the lowest points of Trump’s second term, the American president upbraided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an ugly Oval Office fiasco in which Trump appeared to rely on Russian talking points. Trump’s treatment of the South African leader wasn’t quite as abhorrent — but it certainly brought the Zelenskyy meeting to mind.

The trouble appeared to start in earnest when a reporter asked the American president what it would take to abandon his false beliefs about “white genocide” in South Africa. Ramaphosa intervened to say that it would take “Trump listening to the voices of South Africans.”

The Republican apparently wasn’t pleased with the comment, and he quickly took the meeting in an ugly direction soon after.

Indeed, Trump apparently prepared for the meeting in ways he usually does not, holding a pile of printed articles that he claimed substantiated his claims, which dovetailed with a video he shared with his guest.

Ramaphosa responded by denouncing the rhetoric featured in the video and explaining that those featured in the montage were not part of his government and they were not espousing government policy. The Washington Post’s report on the meeting added, “Trump amplified false claims that White Afrikaners have been victims of a genocide, even showing video of crosses and earthen mounds that he said represented more than 1,000 grave sites of murdered farmers. The mounds were in fact part of a protest against the violence, not actual graves.”

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As tensions grew, Ramaphosa, in apparent sarcasm, said he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump — prompting the Republican to say that he would accept it if such a gift were offered.

Eventually, the South African leader acknowledged the seriousness of crime in his country, but noted that most of the victims of crime are Black. In a moment that helped summarize just how unfortunate this entire meeting was, Trump suggested that he didn’t believe his guest.

A New York Times reporter noted as the discussion turned contentious, “Trump seemed determined to have some kind of confrontation.”

The Center for American Progress’ Patrick Gaspard, who served as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa in the Obama administration, wrote online in response to the Oval Office event, “This ‘meeting’ between Trump and Ramaphosa has devolved into a shameful spectacle. … Engaging on Trump’s terms never goes well for anyone. This is shameful.”