The Madness of Donald Trump
To Benjamin Netanyahu’s delight, Trump proposes the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the creation of a new “Riviera.”
by David Remnick
February 5, 2025
The New Yorker
Photograph by Mohammed Salem / Reuters
More than five hundred years ago, Machiavelli, the philosopher of political practice and modern republicanism, suggested, in “Discourses on Livy,” that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Richard Nixon, according to his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, apparently arrived at a similar conclusion, saying, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
On Tuesday, President Trump appeared alongside the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the East Room at the White House, and declared that the two million Palestinians in Gaza should be forced out of the Strip. The United States would “take over” Gaza and “own” it. The Palestinians, after having suffered tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of countless homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and other infrastructure, would, it appears, have nothing to say about any of this and would be sent . . . elsewhere. Egypt. Jordan. Whatever. It hardly seemed to matter to Trump that such a policy represents ethnic cleansing. Morality is of no interest when there is a real-estate deal to be made.
“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal, and I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East—this could be something that could be so—this could be so magnificent,” Trump said. (The Riviera: “A sunny place for shady people,” as W. Somerset Maugham put it.) “We’ll make sure that it’s done world-class,” Trump went on, building on the real-estate pitch. As he’d noted earlier in the day, “It doesn’t have to be one area, but you take certain areas and you build really good-quality housing, like a beautiful town, like someplace where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying.”
Netanyahu expressed confidence that the plan would “usher in the peace with Saudi Arabia and with others.” The Saudis issued an official statement rejecting Trump’s proposal, but the newly minted yes-men performed on cue: Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted that “the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”
As Trump spoke, Netanyahu could not resist a smile so broad that it must have ached after a while. He could not have imagined a greater gift from the American President or the provision of greater political cover back home. His gratitude was boundless, and he knew well enough to slather on the grease of flattery. “I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu said to Trump, for the cameras. “I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all of these goals.”
Netanyahu’s cheerleaders in the Israeli press, such as Amit Segal, of Channel 12, hailed the news, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the leaders of the annexationist wing of Israeli politics, tweeted, “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Amos Harel, the well-respected reporter and analyst for Haaretz, the liberal daily, told me, “The right wing here is euphoric. There is no way to figure this out. Maybe Trump is more delusional than I thought. He has more energy than Biden, but . . . wow.”
This is not the first time that the Trump family, which has made substantial financial investments in the region in recent years, has envisioned Gaza for its resort potential. Last February, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said in an interview at Harvard University that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable. . . . It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” Kushner has retreated from White House politics, remaining for now in Miami, but he views himself as a grand strategist of the Middle East. At Harvard, he said that “proactively recognizing” a Palestinian state would be a “super-bad idea.”
After watching Trump and Netanyahu, I spoke with Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University, in Gaza, who has been teaching this year at Northwestern University. “I’m depressed, man,” he told me. “I don’t even know what will happen, but I do know that the Palestinians are against this and would rather live in tents and in the rubble of their destroyed homes than leave. And we all know that the neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, have said no to this idea.” King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, both see an increased Palestinian population in their countries as a demographic and political threat to their regimes. Also, although both countries have long-standing peace treaties with Israel, it is unclear how Trump’s proposal and Netanyahu’s pleasure in its pronouncement might affect those arrangements.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat and analyst of the Middle East, told me that his “head was exploding” as he watched Trump. “In twenty-seven years of working for Democrats and Republicans, I’ve never heard a press conference like this,” he said.
Miller, of course, is aware that Trump’s intention, always, is to shock, to play the madman, and thus frighten his rivals and alter the terms of the debate. Maybe, just maybe, it will all dissipate, Miller suggested. Trump habitually says outrageous things, watches how they land, and, often enough, distances himself from his own provocations. (Will he seize Greenland? The Panama Canal? Make Canada the fifty-first state?) Perhaps Trump thinks he’ll be able to prop up Netanyahu at home and so deeply alarm other Middle Eastern leaders that he will be able to both muscle Iran into a deal that ends its nuclear ambitions and complete a broader regional settlement with Saudi coöperation. Or perhaps Trump’s latest performance is of a piece with the strategy of “flooding the zone” with so much chaos and deceptive rhetoric, and with so many mind-altering proposals and appointments, that, while the establishment’s collective head explodes on an hourly basis, he achieves at least some of his fondest ambitions.
And yet it seems inevitable that there will be a price for all the madness. Miller cautioned that, although Trump may back away from his proposal of ethnic cleansing and Riviera creation, such a performance sends a particularly dangerous message: “It is a nod to Putin that he can keep the territory he’s taken in Ukraine, and to Xi, who might now have more confidence about establishing a blockade of Taiwan in preparation for an invasion. It all reflects the mind-set of an unserious man.”
Nixon considered himself to be a profound thinker on global strategy. And yet it’s important to recall that, though he might have convinced himself that his act would bring the North Vietnamese leadership to heel, that misbegotten war ended in American defeat. Similarly, Putin’s veiled nuclear threats during his war on Ukraine, and Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” against North Korea, in 2017, hardly proved decisive, much less constructive. The President’s decision to deploy, yet again, a display of chaotic bravado—an enactment of the Madman Theory, if that’s what it is—will do nothing to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, and brings disgrace to the United States. ♦
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
To Benjamin Netanyahu’s delight, Trump proposes the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the creation of a new “Riviera.”
by David Remnick
February 5, 2025
The New Yorker
Photograph by Mohammed Salem / ReutersMore than five hundred years ago, Machiavelli, the philosopher of political practice and modern republicanism, suggested, in “Discourses on Livy,” that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Richard Nixon, according to his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, apparently arrived at a similar conclusion, saying, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
On Tuesday, President Trump appeared alongside the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the East Room at the White House, and declared that the two million Palestinians in Gaza should be forced out of the Strip. The United States would “take over” Gaza and “own” it. The Palestinians, after having suffered tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of countless homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and other infrastructure, would, it appears, have nothing to say about any of this and would be sent . . . elsewhere. Egypt. Jordan. Whatever. It hardly seemed to matter to Trump that such a policy represents ethnic cleansing. Morality is of no interest when there is a real-estate deal to be made.
“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal, and I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East—this could be something that could be so—this could be so magnificent,” Trump said. (The Riviera: “A sunny place for shady people,” as W. Somerset Maugham put it.) “We’ll make sure that it’s done world-class,” Trump went on, building on the real-estate pitch. As he’d noted earlier in the day, “It doesn’t have to be one area, but you take certain areas and you build really good-quality housing, like a beautiful town, like someplace where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying.”
Netanyahu expressed confidence that the plan would “usher in the peace with Saudi Arabia and with others.” The Saudis issued an official statement rejecting Trump’s proposal, but the newly minted yes-men performed on cue: Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted that “the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”
As Trump spoke, Netanyahu could not resist a smile so broad that it must have ached after a while. He could not have imagined a greater gift from the American President or the provision of greater political cover back home. His gratitude was boundless, and he knew well enough to slather on the grease of flattery. “I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu said to Trump, for the cameras. “I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all of these goals.”
Netanyahu’s cheerleaders in the Israeli press, such as Amit Segal, of Channel 12, hailed the news, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the leaders of the annexationist wing of Israeli politics, tweeted, “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Amos Harel, the well-respected reporter and analyst for Haaretz, the liberal daily, told me, “The right wing here is euphoric. There is no way to figure this out. Maybe Trump is more delusional than I thought. He has more energy than Biden, but . . . wow.”
This is not the first time that the Trump family, which has made substantial financial investments in the region in recent years, has envisioned Gaza for its resort potential. Last February, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said in an interview at Harvard University that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable. . . . It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” Kushner has retreated from White House politics, remaining for now in Miami, but he views himself as a grand strategist of the Middle East. At Harvard, he said that “proactively recognizing” a Palestinian state would be a “super-bad idea.”
After watching Trump and Netanyahu, I spoke with Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University, in Gaza, who has been teaching this year at Northwestern University. “I’m depressed, man,” he told me. “I don’t even know what will happen, but I do know that the Palestinians are against this and would rather live in tents and in the rubble of their destroyed homes than leave. And we all know that the neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, have said no to this idea.” King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, both see an increased Palestinian population in their countries as a demographic and political threat to their regimes. Also, although both countries have long-standing peace treaties with Israel, it is unclear how Trump’s proposal and Netanyahu’s pleasure in its pronouncement might affect those arrangements.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat and analyst of the Middle East, told me that his “head was exploding” as he watched Trump. “In twenty-seven years of working for Democrats and Republicans, I’ve never heard a press conference like this,” he said.
Miller, of course, is aware that Trump’s intention, always, is to shock, to play the madman, and thus frighten his rivals and alter the terms of the debate. Maybe, just maybe, it will all dissipate, Miller suggested. Trump habitually says outrageous things, watches how they land, and, often enough, distances himself from his own provocations. (Will he seize Greenland? The Panama Canal? Make Canada the fifty-first state?) Perhaps Trump thinks he’ll be able to prop up Netanyahu at home and so deeply alarm other Middle Eastern leaders that he will be able to both muscle Iran into a deal that ends its nuclear ambitions and complete a broader regional settlement with Saudi coöperation. Or perhaps Trump’s latest performance is of a piece with the strategy of “flooding the zone” with so much chaos and deceptive rhetoric, and with so many mind-altering proposals and appointments, that, while the establishment’s collective head explodes on an hourly basis, he achieves at least some of his fondest ambitions.
And yet it seems inevitable that there will be a price for all the madness. Miller cautioned that, although Trump may back away from his proposal of ethnic cleansing and Riviera creation, such a performance sends a particularly dangerous message: “It is a nod to Putin that he can keep the territory he’s taken in Ukraine, and to Xi, who might now have more confidence about establishing a blockade of Taiwan in preparation for an invasion. It all reflects the mind-set of an unserious man.”
Nixon considered himself to be a profound thinker on global strategy. And yet it’s important to recall that, though he might have convinced himself that his act would bring the North Vietnamese leadership to heel, that misbegotten war ended in American defeat. Similarly, Putin’s veiled nuclear threats during his war on Ukraine, and Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” against North Korea, in 2017, hardly proved decisive, much less constructive. The President’s decision to deploy, yet again, a display of chaotic bravado—an enactment of the Madman Theory, if that’s what it is—will do nothing to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, and brings disgrace to the United States. ♦
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992. He is the author of seven books; the most recent is “Holding the Note,” a collection of his profiles of musicians.
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-gaza-video-reflects-shared-us-and-israeli-histories-of-ethnic-cleansing/
Op-Ed
War & Peace
Trump Gaza Video Reflects Shared US and Israeli Histories of Ethnic Cleansing
The video’s disturbing futuristic vision of Gaza is an AI version of “The White Man’s Burden.”
by Seraj Assi
February 27, 2025
Truthout
The video’s disturbing futuristic vision of Gaza is an AI version of “The White Man’s Burden.”
by Seraj Assi
February 27, 2025
Truthout
Palestinians walk past tents lining the streets amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on February 21, 2025. Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump recently shared an AI-generated video that shows his horrific futuristic vision for Gaza, featuring Trump himself, Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveling and enjoying themselves on the ruins of displaced Palestinians and basking in the glory of an ethnically cleansed Gaza.
The brazen footage, which Trump posted late Tuesday to Instagram and Truth Social, reimagines the devastated strip as a “Middle East Riviera” boasting of a luxury Trump hotel, glittering Western skyscrapers, beach resorts with bearded belly dancers and a colossal Trump golden statue hovering godlike over the besieged strip. A “Trump Gaza” shop offers golden merchandise of the U.S. president, where a child is carrying a helium-inflated golden balloon shaped like Trump’s head.
The video shows Trump waltzing with a belly dancer in a nightclub, Netanyahu enjoying poolside drinks at a luxury resort, and Musk eating a dip and showering locals with U.S. dollar bills. The dehumanizing footage is set to an up-tempo dance track featuring patronizing and personality cult-infused lyrics: “Donald Trump will set you free, bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here. Trump Gaza shining bright, golden future, a brand new light.”
“Trump Gaza” celebrates ethnic cleansing — nothing says Indigenous erasure like renaming.
This unhinged celebration of war crimes and crimes against humanity almost has no precedent in human history. It shows total contempt for basic principles of international justice and human rights, and makes mockery of the more than 61,000 Palestinian victims, including 17,000 children, who have been massacred by Israel in Gaza over the past 15 months, with U.S. funds and arms.
The video, which appeared to take inspiration from the genocidal imaginations of some Zionist social media accounts, has since gone viral. It has sparked outrage among anti-genocide activists and Palestinians, who understood the dystopian horror lurking beneath the outlandish AI-generated scenes, evoking long-held colonial fantasies of civilizing missions and “the white man’s burden.” Ghassan Abu Sitta sums it up quite eloquently: “The delusions of godlike divinity that shapes the colonial mindset of White supremacy. Both in the need for violence to be performative and in their belief of the benevolent nature of their crimes.”
Over the past weeks, Trump has repeated his proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza with shocking persistence. “We just clean out that whole thing,” the newly inaugurated president told reporters on Air Force One in the early days of his presidency. He further described Gaza as a “demolition site,” with “phenomenal location, on the sea” and “the best weather.” Calling for the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza, Trump has further suggested that Egypt and Jordan should accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza as part of a plan to “clean out” the territory. Another alleged Trump administration proposal suggested forcibly relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Indonesia, reviving decadeslong Israeli campaigns to depopulate and ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Trump’s ethnic cleansing proposals clearly echo Jared Kushner’s comments, made in a March 2024 interview with Harvard, that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.” Those aren’t the only comments Kushner has made that suggest he sees the broader Middle East as empty land ready to be morphed by him and his allies. In a long social media post after Israel bombed a Beirut suburb to kill former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the president’s son-in-law openly touted his imperialist visions as a historic opportunity, reflecting one of the more terrifying foreign policy ideas pouring out of Trump’s inner circle: “Moments like this come once in a generation, if they even come at all. The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment.”
“Trump Gaza” celebrates ethnic cleansing — nothing says Indigenous erasure like renaming.
We are entering a perilous stage in which Trump’s pro-Israel megadonors, led by figures such as Miriam Adelson, and cheered on by genocide-mongers like Kushner and Marco Rubio, are openly pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This represents a dangerous phase in U.S. genocidal complicity in Gaza, especially since policies that enable ethnic cleansing seem to enjoy bipartisan support. As Rep. Rashida Tlaib bluntly put it after Trump first elucidated his plans to take over the Strip: Trump “can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide.”
U.S. complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians does not stop in Gaza. In recent weeks, anticipating Trump’s official recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of the West Bank, Israel has forcibly expelled the residents of three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank — Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams — as it gears up to escalate its military operations in the area. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared the camps “empty” and ready to be occupied by the Israeli military, which has deployed a tank division to the area, while vowing that Israel will not allow displaced Palestinians to return to the cleared camps. The operation has resulted in the forced displacement of 40,000 Palestinians. This is ethnic cleansing in broad daylight, funded and abetted by Western democracies. To cite Jeremy Corybn, “For the first time in over 20 years, Israel has deployed tanks in the West Bank, after expelling 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps. This is a prelude to full annexation, and makes a mockery of the ceasefire agreement that Israel continues to violate. We are witnessing ethnic cleansing — and our government’s ongoing failure to defend international law is utterly, utterly shameful.”
The U.S. and Israel share a history of ethnic cleansing. Trump’s plans for Gaza echoes the forced displacement of Native Americans, via the Indian Removal Act, which is widely described by historians as ethnic cleansing, or genocide. U.S. founders and politicians invoked similar justifications for the genocide of Native Americans — always in the name of “civilization.” Thomas Jefferson declared that the “barbarities” of the Native Americans “justified extermination.” A century later, President Theodore Roosevelt said that “extermination was as ultimately beneficial [to Native Americans] as it was inevitable.” Following in U.S. footsteps, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, the principal overseer of Nazi Germany’s genocidal pogroms, declared: “It is the curse of greatness that it must step over dead bodies to create new life.”
Aware of this shared history, North American Indigenous scholars see a common struggle against settler colonialism. An October 2023 Gaza solidarity letter, signed by over 1,100 North American Indigenous scholars, workers, students and activists, demanded: “Stop the genocide. End the siege. End the occupation. Dismantle apartheid. Decolonize Palestine.” The letter added: “The … horrific violence in Gaza resulted from 75 years of Israeli settler colonial dispossession, 56 years of military occupation, and 16 years of an open-air prison for 2.2 million people, half of whom are children. The atrocities of the Israeli apartheid regime in Palestine are relentless, illegal under international law, and consistent with settler-colonial projects globally.”
We must understand Trump’s real estate imperialism, or what anti-colonial scholars term “violent dispossession,” within the framework of Israel’s resettlement plans in Gaza. To cite historian Patrick Wolfe, author of Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native: “Settler colonialism destroys to replace.” Or as Theodor Herzl, founding father of Zionism, put it: “If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct.” Israel’s razing of Gaza is inextricably linked to those settler-colonial ambitions envisioned by Zionist founders and now echoed by Trump’s depiction of Gaza as a “demolition site.” It’s hard to think of a worse case of premeditated ethnic cleansing.
Trump’s genocidal plan for Gaza is also inexorably linked to white supremacy. It has all the imprints of what anticolonial historians term the “White Man’s Burden syndrome.” In 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands,” which has ever since served as a hymn to U.S. imperialism. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become president, copied the poem with avid interest and sent it to his friend, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” The poem is a metaphor for the civilizing mission that portrays colonialism as a benevolent enterprise, bringing the “light” of “civilization” to “primitive” Indigenous people, and urging the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, following in the footsteps of Great Britain and other European nations. Here we can’t help but notice the overt meaning in the lyrics of Trump’s AI-generated video: “Trump Gaza shining bright, golden future, a brand new light.”
It’s hard to fathom Trump’s genocidal musings on Gaza without harking back to Kipling’s poem. While Trump’s poetic skills can be described as shaky at best, he seems to follow quite closely Kipling’s urge to “Take up the White Man’s burden — Send forth the best ye breed, Go send your sons to exile, To serve your captives’ need … To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain … And reap his old reward.” And while Trump has probably never heard of (let alone read) Kipling, his dehumanizing view of Palestinians eerily evokes the writer’s depiction of Indigenous inhabitants as “half devil and half child,” where the “benevolent” Western colonizer, Trump — the self-declared emperor of our era — is urged to “wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild — Your new-caught, sullen peoples.”
We must resist ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism everywhere we can. As the Indigenous solidarity letter, referring to U.S. genocidal complicity in Palestine, concluded: “Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation are only possible because of international support. The settler states that dispossess and occupy our lands support Israel in dispossessing and occupying Palestine. We see and feel the strength of Palestinian families in the face of the quotidian violence of the Israeli apartheid regime.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Seraj Assi
Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, D.C. and the author, most recently, of My Life as an Alien (Tartarus Press).
Politics
Trump's social media video garners pushback from Arabs and Muslims in U.S. and Gaza
February 26, 2025
Trump's social media video garners pushback from Arabs and Muslims in U.S. and Gaza
February 26, 2025
Heard on All Things Considered
by Sarah McCammon, Hadeel Al-Shalchi,Anas Baba
NPR
3-Minute Listen
Transcript
by Sarah McCammon, Hadeel Al-Shalchi,Anas Baba
NPR
3-Minute Listen
Transcript
A composite made from an AI-generated video President Trump posted to social media on Tuesday night. Screenshots via Instagram. Annotation by NPR
Arabs and Muslims in the United States and abroad are criticizing a controversial video posted by President Trump on social media.
The apparently AI-generated video includes depictions of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing in Gaza, and imagines scenes of destruction in Gaza transformed into a glitzy Riviera-style resort called "TRUMP GAZA."
The video also shows children running out of the rubble into a world of palm trees and luxury buildings, and a towering golden statue of Trump. It depicts men in apparent drag dancing in bikinis on the beach, Trump enjoying a belly dancer and a man resembling Elon Musk being showered with cash in the form of U.S. currency.
The post comes weeks after Trump suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip and relocate Palestinians.
Middle East
Trump floats idea for U.S. to take ownership of the Gaza Strip and redevelop it
In Gaza, many residents have little to no internet service, but some who viewed the video expressed anger to NPR Gaza producer Anas Baba. Baba showed the video to 20-year-old Mohamed Abdelrahman who rejected the idea.
"We won't be lured by a few statues and money, leave us alone and let us rebuild our homes by ourselves," he told Baba.
Politics
Trump introduces a green card for the rich: the gold card
Faye Nemer, CEO and founder of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) American Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn, Michigan, called the video "offensive and counterproductive to peace talks" in a statement to NPR.
Nemer, who says she voted for Trump in November, is calling on him to remove the video and issue a "reconciliatory statement."
When asked about the video and the president's messaging about Gaza, the White House reinforced his previous statements.
"As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is [uninhabitable] for any human being," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in the statement to NPR.
"President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza's rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come," she added.
Arabs and Muslims in the United States and abroad are criticizing a controversial video posted by President Trump on social media.
The apparently AI-generated video includes depictions of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing in Gaza, and imagines scenes of destruction in Gaza transformed into a glitzy Riviera-style resort called "TRUMP GAZA."
The video also shows children running out of the rubble into a world of palm trees and luxury buildings, and a towering golden statue of Trump. It depicts men in apparent drag dancing in bikinis on the beach, Trump enjoying a belly dancer and a man resembling Elon Musk being showered with cash in the form of U.S. currency.
The post comes weeks after Trump suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza Strip and relocate Palestinians.
Middle East
Trump floats idea for U.S. to take ownership of the Gaza Strip and redevelop it
In Gaza, many residents have little to no internet service, but some who viewed the video expressed anger to NPR Gaza producer Anas Baba. Baba showed the video to 20-year-old Mohamed Abdelrahman who rejected the idea.
"We won't be lured by a few statues and money, leave us alone and let us rebuild our homes by ourselves," he told Baba.
Politics
Trump introduces a green card for the rich: the gold card
Faye Nemer, CEO and founder of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) American Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn, Michigan, called the video "offensive and counterproductive to peace talks" in a statement to NPR.
Nemer, who says she voted for Trump in November, is calling on him to remove the video and issue a "reconciliatory statement."
When asked about the video and the president's messaging about Gaza, the White House reinforced his previous statements.
"As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is [uninhabitable] for any human being," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in the statement to NPR.
"President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza's rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come," she added.
