• President Donald Trump has only the dimmest understanding of foreign affairs, history or diplomacy. But he’s always fashioned himself a real estate guy. And that’s the lens he’s bringing to U.S. foreign policy in his second term — whether it’s the acquisition of Greenland or trying to slap tariffs on neighbors as if he were renegotiating the rent. Nowhere was this approach more evident than his unhinged proposal last night to send two million Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan while bulldozers clean up the rubble caused by Israel’s devastating war. (Both countries adamantly oppose the idea for many reasons.) Then, Trump wants to turn Gaza into some type of global tourist destination packed with resorts and golf courses. In Trumpworld, the territory is “valuable” waterfront property.

• Trump’s proposing a crime against humanity and “no one should miss that,” Matt Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) former foreign policy adviser, told What A Day. The president “has made it the stated policy of the United States to commit and support a crime against humanity,” he added. The definition of ethnic cleaning includes the mass expulsion of an ethnic group — a move forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. 

• Aside from, you know, the human atrocities, developing Gaza isn’t in itself an objectionable idea. Palestinians should have a habitable home territory, at peace with its neighbors. But Trump “sees everything as a money-making deal, a real estate deal,” Duss said. Palestinians are going to need economic security and safety if peace is the objective, he added. “Let the Palestinians rebuild Gaza for themselves. That’s ultimately the only way that you're going to get a sustainable and genuine future of peaceful coexistence.”

• Some Republicans are even taking aim at Trump’s plans: “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers’ blood,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted. Even a broken clock like Rand is right twice a day!

• It’s extremely unlikely Israel’s far-right would allow Palestinians to return once they’ve been expelled, because Israeli settlers want to occupy Gaza. And who would even pay for the development? Trump’s track record shows he’s hardly likely to follow through on picking up the tab — a possible $50 billion over 40 years. What’s more, Trump put most people who would work on such development projects on administrative leave today! Forcing other countries to accept refugees would inevitably stoke tensions in the Middle East, which isn’t what anyone needs right now.

• Hamas militants in Gaza and other regional extremists have a potent new recruiting message, as Crooked’s Tommy Vietor points out: Join us or be expelled from your homeland, possibly forever. When Trump announced his plan, Susie Wiles, his own chief of staff Susie Wiles, shot daggers at him with her eyes. So, yeah, it seems that even she agrees with us. Welcome to the resistance, Susie!

• All of this is emblematic of the transactional nature of Trumpworld 2.0. In less than a month, Trump and his cronies have proposed building Mar-a-Lago in Gaza, buying Greenland and Canada, raising rent on Canada and Mexico, and seizing the Panama Canal. Most of these sweeping, unrealistic claims, experts believe, are empty nonsense to make headlines and rile up the folks in the cheap seats.

• “A lot of it is theater and throwing things out there and just becoming the center of the conversation, without there being much substance,” Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the Crisis Group think tank, told What A Day. “But at the same time, we can't just say it’s just rhetoric. We don't know what he's going to do.” 

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