Flooding the MAGA Strip

 

Trump recently floated the obviously insane idea that the United States should take over the Gaza Strip (and turn it into a "MAGA Strip") while removing all of the Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan (both of which will refuse to take them in). Has the Donald finally lost it? Even Netanyahu looked embarassed at that press conference! As far as I can tell, there may be three "rational" reasons for why Trump makes this kind of statement. All three are based on the assumption that he´s bluffing. 

1. "Madman Strategy". Does Trump want to scare Hamas and/or Israel and/or the Arab states into compliance by pretending to be insane? It doesn´t seem to work on Hamas. Besides, the Madman Strategy only works if the president pretending to be mad actually *isn´t* mad, but rather extremely sly and cynical (read: Nixon). 

2. Trump may want to throw out some red meat to the right-wing Zionists in Israel and the Christian Zionists in the United States, both of whom "should" be skeptical to the armistice and hostage deal with Hamas. After all, the deal looks like the policy favored by Joe Biden! By rhetorically pretending to be Meir Kahane, Trump can defuse the opposition. MPAI in action.

3. It´s a gigantic diversion from something else Trump wants really badly. Probably the approval of the Senate for his cabinet picks or DOGE´s purge of the administrative state. The YouTube clip above argues for this possibility. Note the bizarre fact that Trump makes his "proposal" during complicated peace talks between Israel and Hamas, a proposal that would make Hamas leave the negotiating table if they had taken it seriously. 

Probably number three or a combination of two and three. I suppose we all have to wait and see...