Deranged? Nuts? Problematic?

How plans for a Middle East Riviera teach us how to "think" like Donald Trump

A 1903 postcard from the original Riviera, known to the French as the Côte d'Azur, on France’s southeastern Mediterranean coast. Image courtesy of the Newberry Library/Wikimedia Commons

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I so called this one.

Last night, the New York Times alerted me to the press conference held by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Donald J. Trump. Why? Because Trump announced that the most sensible plan for the reconstruction of Gaza would be to move the inhabitants to nice houses in Egypt and Jordan, move in United States occupation troops to secure Gaza as United States territory, and rebuild Gaza as a resort community. Democratic Virginia Senator Tim Kaine characterized the announcement as “deranged” and “nuts;” while South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham called the idea “problematic,” which is GOP-speak for “bonkers.”

But honestly: if you have learned to think like Trump, as I have, you saw this one coming even in his first presidency. Why?

Think like Trump. First, the idea of ethnically cleansing a group of traumatized and homeless people breaks the Overton window, a phrase that means “say something utterly bonkers, and eventually folks will get used to it.” This is the whole philosophy of MAGA governance. In this case, breaking hte Overton window would be intended to shock a range of international policymakers into a truly weird and sad solution to a seemingly intractable problem.

Second, Trump is so stupid and unlettered that he thinks that the United States’ lengthy occupation of Iraq didn’t work only because he wasn’t running it. Finally, there is so much money to be made if this actually happened—even if the plan is only partially executed.

Of course, you would have to address the question of how you get investors to pony up in a region saturated with violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors. But never mind. In the press conference, Trump said that he and his team were going to solve the problem of Gaza “very quickly,” because Gaza “has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly who's been really very unlucky.” In his Trumpian way, he then emphasized this absurd characterization of a decades-long policy failure: “It's been very unlucky. It's been an unlucky place for a long time.”

Trump has repeatedly characterized Gaza as a “demolition site,” which is hard to quarrel with. That said, all of this language obscures (and, as we now say, normalizes) the recent history of who, precisely, turned this strip of land by the ocean into a long pile of rubble that could take as long as fifteen years, with people working 24 hours a day, just to clear. Most demolition sites also do not have unexploded ordinance and thousands of bodies still buried under the broken concrete and rebar.

So there’s that.

In any case, Trump’s proposal for rebuilding this ruined community is to turn it into Miami. Some observers are already calling this plan “Gaz-A-Lago” and “Mar-A-Gaza,” while Trump prefers “Middle Eastern Riviera.” This would require another Nakba: expelling all the Palestinians who survived the war and expelling them to camps in Egypt and Jordan. As Trump explained,

The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.

They're living under fallen concrete that's very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too.

We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job, do something different.

“We’ll own it!” Imagine that: owning such a jolly piece of the Middle East.

Well, actually I did imagine that, almost a year ago, when Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law observed that Gaza was potentially valuable “waterfront property.” The current occupants (who were being relocated every few weeks by the Israeli army so that their homes, and then their refugee encampments, could be bombed) could now be removed to other countries. Kushner suggested Egypt as a destination, and then mused: “But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there. I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.” Subtext: because you will need some Palestinians to return to do low paid wage work—especially at those resorts!

I had imagined this even before 2024, and not because I am cynical; although, when it comes to the Trump-Kushner axis of evil, cynicism is one way to anticipate the next move. In a 2019 meeting in Bahrain, Kushner distributed what the New York Times editorial board described at the time as a “slick promotional publication” similar to “a fantastical New York real estate promotion” that called for a $50 billion infrastructure investment in Gaza and the West Bank. The plan, titled “Peace to Prosperity,” would vitiate the need for a Palestinian state by “expanding educational opportunities, jobs, housing, tourism and the rule of law.”

Now that Gaza is in ruins and this idea is out there as a real thing, I am having so many thoughts. I am wondering what the Arab American voters of Dearborn, who helped swing Michigan to Trump and reportedly felt “vindicated” by Harris’s loss, are thinking about the massive grift they have now been presented with. I am wondering how each constituency that voted for Trump is going to get its own personalized and well-deserved moment of realizing they have been used.

I also wonder about stories about the Gaz-A-Lago stories that are, right now, going almost completely uncovered by newspapers with sadly diminished foreign policy staffs. For example, Jordan’s condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza may make the kingdom radically disinclined to allow Netanyahu to outsource the problem he has created.

Jordan has periodically been forced to absorb large numbers of Palestinians, and it hasn’t gone well. In 2023, Marwan Muasher at the Carnegie Endowment wrote that “Neither Palestinians nor host states are willing to entertain another Nakba, the name given to the expulsion of Palestinians from their home and land in 1948, no matter how bad the humanitarian situation gets.” Muasher explains that “Jordan’s fears are also a matter of identity,” since the nation’s elites do not believe that the Palestinians who arrived generations ago have ever assimilated. Thus,

To force a large number of Palestinians into Jordan today, and to perhaps give them Jordanian citizenship over time, would further fuel the argument over who is a Jordanian. Thus, the resolve not to admit more Palestinians in the country comes from two directions: an establishment that does not wish further dilution of the Jordanian identity and an official and public position that does not want a Palestinian state outside Palestinian soil, and certainly not in Jordan.

In several ways, Jordan to do this risks of destabilizing the political structure of a key regional ally for both the United States and Israel. Then, there is the problem of Hamas, which clearly still exists in sufficient numbers to mount parades and other celebratory events: Egypt, in particular, is concerned about importing Islamic militants, which the nation has fought to suppress for decades.

But think like Trump—just for a minute, if you can bear it. It’s not just that he doesn’t know these things, and wouldn’t care about them if he did. It’s that he believes that everyone has a price and there is always a deal to be made. We have seen that in the last ten days in relation to trade with Mexico and Canada; and it is the logic behind these Panama and Greenland schemes. It has been the method for his takeover of the Republican Party since, as we have learned, nearly every Republican does have a price.

Do Jordan and Egypt also have a price? We will soon see.

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Did you know that Bookshop.org allows you to set up your own virtual bookstore? It does! And the Political Junkie bookstore will now carry readings that shape my thinking, as well as books featured in the “Why Now?” podcast. Today’s books that can help you “think” like Trump are:

• Robert Caro, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage Books, 1975). This Pulitzer-prize winning doorstop describes a period in which one politically-connected visionary reshaped New York City, sometimes by razing entire neighborhoods, evicting their residents, and building modern, multi-story buildings and cultural centers. This is also precisely the period when Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s father went from being a successful builder to becoming a tycoon.

• Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador, 2008). A student of late capitalism and a terrific, lucid writer, Klein argues that disasters create opportunities for expropriation and exploitation. Need I say more?

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Short takes:

• You know that buy-out plan that Elon Musk floated to federal workers—resign now, and we will pay you to stay home for eight months? It’s a grift! “The fine print of the deal, which at the time was detailed in an email and series of online FAQs, made it clear that employees could be required to work until their official resignation date.,” Judd Legum writes at Popular Information, having actually read the deal—something no other reporter seems to have done. “This means that federal employees could be agreeing to resign in exchange for nothing,” About 20,000, or 1% of federal workers, have accepted it—but as Legum points out, there is about 6% turnover every year, so these would be people who had planned to retire anyway. However, “The most important part of the contract released by OPM is Section 13. It states that the federal employees who accept the agreement waive their right to enforce the agreement in court or in any other forum." (February 5, 2025)

• It’s hard to know where Trump’s Achilles Heel is right now—but, according to Bill Kristol at The Bulwark, it could be his First Friend. Although Trump’s approval numbers have ticked up slightly, Elon Musk’s are going down. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, “53 percent of voters disapprove of Musk playing a prominent role in the Trump administration, while only 37 percent approve,” Kristol writes. “In an earlier Quinnipiac survey in mid-December, the same number, 53 percent, disapproved of Musk, while 41 percent approved. So as Musk has become ever more prominent, there’s been a slight erosion of support for him, even as Trump’s numbers have improved a bit over that period.” (February 5, 2025)

• For reasons that are unclear, Trump and Elon Musk did not anticipate the firehose of press leaks that would result from their attempt to destroy government agencies and upend the lives of thousands of federal workers. The idea of planting professional finks in agencies is one solution. “Other ideas include potentially accessing, via virtual back-door access, some staffers’ government emails or communications to see if there’s any recent evidence of leaking to the media, though sources generally concede that it is unlikely career officials would be using their work accounts for these kinds of sensitive and unauthorized conversations,” Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez write at Rolling Stone. “Other plans focus on Trump administration officials sending different staffers different internal messages or pieces of disinformation, to see what does or doesn’t leak — in the hopes of isolating where some of the leaking could be stemming from.” (February 4, 2025)