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The venerable East Room, where Abraham Lincoln lay in state and Pablo Casals played cello, had turned into a mosh pit. Sweaty reporters, photographers and camera crews were crammed elbow to elbow. The Guardian shoehorned its way into a corner where a panel had fallen off the wall. Never used to happened in Joe Biden’s day.
The big event, an hour and a half later than billed, was Donald Trump’s joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first foreign leader to visit the White House in Trump’s second term. Two lecterns, two US flags and two Israeli flags were set up before a gold curtain between two elaborate crystal lamps.
Netanyahu was afforded the honour of wearing the vintage Maga uniform of white shirt and red tie, while Trump went off-brand with a tie of sky blue. Perhaps he sees a kindred scoundrel in the Israeli leader.
Netanyahu has bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges dating to 2019; Trump was convicted last year on 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records. Netanyahu has been slapped with an arrest warrant by the international criminal court over alleged war crimes in Gaza. As would become clear, Trump seems determined to rival him on that score too.
The president began by boasting about how he got a “beautiful” US embassy built in Jerusalem, ranting about his predecessor and giving a shout out to his staff. So far, so Trump. But then things turned weird. Very weird.
Gaza has been “an unlucky place” for a long time, Trump mused, as if discussing a haunted house. “Being in its presence has just not been good and it should not go through a process of building and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there.”
As Netanyahu looked on, perhaps trying to restrain himself from bursting out laughing, Trump spoke of building “various domains” in other countries “with humanitarian hearts” where 1.8 million Palestinians could live instead. “This can be paid for by neighbouring countries of great wealth,” he slipped in.
Was this a plan or the concept of a plan? The man who once aced a cognitive test by reciting “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,” rambled on: “It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12 – it could be numerous sites or one large site.”
It would be “something really spectacular”, he promised, which is one way to describe ethnic cleansing.
Then came the stunner. “The US will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump declared, “and we’ll do a job with it, too. We’ll own it.”
What? Did he say own it? And the supposedly isolationist “America first” president did not rule out sending US troops to take control.
It was the latest indication that Trump seems be entering a new and dangerously expansionist phase. At this stage eight years ago Trump 1.0 was mired in petty concerns such as lying about the size of his inauguration crowd or trying to take away Americans’ health care. Trump 2.0 is playing on altogether grander stage.
He said Canada should become the 51st state, prompting nervous laughter from Canadians followed by horror as it dawned that he wasn’t joking. He rattled Denmark by saying it should sell Greenland and upset Panama by vowing to retake the canal. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and, in his inaugural address, spoke of “manifest destiny” launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.
He is the new Julius Caesar – “I came, I saw, I conquered,” – and has no need to fear the Ides of March having already neutered the Senate.
But when the press conference reached the question and answer stage, his true motivations became clear. He said of Gaza: “We’re going to take over the place and we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”
Of course. Ultimately he’s still that grasping property developer with a daddy complex who launched himself into Manhattan in the late 1970s with the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. Once again he spies dollar signs in rubble and despair.
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins who will live in this new Trumpy utopia, he said: “I envision world people living there – the world’s people. I think you’ll make that into an international unbelievable place. I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable and I think the entire world – representatives from all over the world will be there.”
Forget Westworld, welcome to Trumpworld: a fantasy theme park full of Trump Towers, Trump golf courses and Maga androids. He added: “I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Ah, the master of branding. Who is going to tell the Palestinians that Trump’s property and casino businesses filed for bankruptcy several times, his university faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, his foundation was tarnished by scandal and his company was ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial?
One man who clearly doesn’t care is Netanyahu, who hailed Trump as “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House” and said his Gaza plan – adamantly opposed by Palestinians and neighbouring countries – is “worth paying attention to” and “could change history”.
The normalisation continues. Netanyahu also offered this homage to Trump that will resonate with his ardent fans: “You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘You know, he’s right’.”
That group does not include Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator who responded to Trump’s proposal on social media by observing: “He’s totally lost it.”
And we are only two weeks in. Trump seems determined to make this The Empire Strikes Back, Godfather Part II or Terminator 2: Judgment Day of presidential terms: a sequel that outdoes the first go. Today Gaza, tomorrow the world.
