I Don’t Think MAGA Will Go Gaga over Gaza

In a matter of weeks, Trump is already contradicting everything he ran on.

Apparently frustrated or bored thinking about how to reduce the cost of eggs, and unable to convince Canada to dissolve itself and become part of the United States by threatening it with tariffs, on Tuesday evening Donald Trump engaged in a freelancing foreign policy meltdown in public, asserting at a press conference that the United States intends to annex the Gaza Strip as an American territory, relocate its 2 million people to as yet unidentified places with “great housing” and then develop the “property” like a giant real estate project.

I may have a faulty memory, but didn’t Trump run for president based on the idea that the United States should avoid foreign entanglements and focus on America First? Hasn’t he been stoking outrage for over a decade about presidents and generals who send our troops all over the world for no good reason at great cost to the troops and the taxpayers? When his rallygoers chanted “USA, USA” all fall, were they hoping Trump would use the nation’s might and power to plant an American flag on about 150 square miles of desert halfway around the world that is currently covered in megatons of concrete rubble?

I don’t know, but this doesn’t feel like “winning again.”

It feels a lot more like “losing.”

I am sure this is a great foreign policy move and I just haven’t realized the genius behind it. But I have a few questions:

You said leaders from all over the region thought this was a great idea. Do you think the government of Saudi Arabia felt that way when it denounced the proposal at 4:30 A.M. Riyad time?

Call me an alarmist, but I have heard that the Middle East is a volatile region that often experiences terrorism. Do you think 10,000 construction workers with “really great jobs” will be safe from terrorism while they are building on territory that has been hotly contested for over a century?

I think there are some Hamas militants still living in Gaza. Do you think they will be happy to leave if we offer them “fantastic” housing elsewhere? Israel engaged in war against them for 15 months and couldn’t get rid of them, do you think you will be able to do it “quite easily.”

Once this Middle East Riviera is built, what is going to stop some other country from deciding they would like to take it over? Will you create a new Gaza Force to protect it? Are there smart generals at the Pentagon, who you like and that like you, who think this is a good idea?

Will Gazans pay for us to “develop” this property just like Mexicans paid for the wall on the border?

Bibi Netanyahu was smiling so widely during the press conference that he looked like he just found the Afikomen during Passover. Did you tell him you would relocate Palestinians out of the West Bank for him too?

Trump was in the White House for four years previously, and other than the time he said there were “good people” at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, I don’t think he ever looked more stupid and more out of his league than his rambling statement about his real estate development scheme in Gaza.

It is only week three of this Administration, and it is already clear that there is no one at the White House that can take Trump aside and say: “maybe it is best that we think this through a bit before announcing it to the entire world.” Trump is humiliating our country and humiliating himself.

Tyrants drunk with power and surrounded by sycophants make big mistakes.

It seems like this is already happening at this White House.

It is a scary situation, but I hope it is also one that is going to lead to opportunities to start curbing this very tiny man’s power very soon.