President Trump Floods the Zone
By David McCalmont
President Trump Floods the Zone
President Donald J. Trump entered his second term of office with an enormous pool of social good will and political capital generated by his wunderkind charisma, releasing an unrelenting wave of abrasive and sometimes unvetted art-of-the-deal proposals, forcing Democrats – who run the Fourth Estate – to run unhinged in all directions. Three weeks into his presidency, the President’s whirlwind style has earned him even greater surpluses of social and political capital if his positive approval noted at the Super Bowl vis-a-vis his leftist nemesis – dressed unseriously in cutoff denim shorts and halter top – Taylor Swift is anecdotal evidence. Add to that the highest favorability rating in his 10-year political career at 53%. Trump is not only quick out of the gate but is also leading the other horses by five lengths before the first pole.
The craft of punditry can be put to the test by the art of the deal. Things move so fast, and nothing tomorrow is as it appears today. It looks as if Trump is needlessly pressing the boundaries and drawing down too quickly from his silo of good will after only three weeks into his presidency. One day, we're in Kansas, the next day we're in Oz, and then bluntly back to Kansas. The degree of damage to the republic has been so deleterious with poisonous roots sunk so deep in important sectors of government and society that it was necessary to move rapidly on all fronts and with boldness, confidence, clarity of purpose, and a nod to intimidation and demoralization for Trump's enemies.
President Trump, in the company of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House sucked all the oxygen out of the D.C. area with his bombshell proposal to take over Gaza, relocate its population, and rebuild the area as an autonomous city-state. Frankly, I'm surprised with the degree of broad support he has received for the big-picture idea of making over from scratch a miserable sector of a politically beleaguered corner of the world. Leaders no doubt must stand upfront and lead, but they can't stray too far from those they are leading. America's plate is full at this early juncture. The President's "Gaza Plan" is a dessert and aperitif that looks too gluttonous after an already five-course meal.
So, you would think.
But Trump's modus operandi is to “flood the zone.” His goal is to get everybody to talk, and he's not going to let up.
A Middle East Makeover
Unsettling to me initially were the foreign policy proposals President Trump dropped like bombs: Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Gaza. They were not vocalized during the policy-laden campaign year of 2024. Trump/Vance and the Capitol Hill Republican leadership have comfortable mandates to forge ahead on several fronts. Even the Democrat opposition so far is not putting up much of a fight except for the usual screaming like banshees to their choir. A substantial portion of the American electorate is wishing and hoping for the best from the Trump administration on issues well explained and proposed on the campaign trail.
My immediate reaction to the idea was that "Gaza" was going to cut too much into the president's abundant stash of political capital and not produce the results intended. Too many unanticipated consequences. After more study, however, I became enthralled by the Grand Architect's vision for a rebuilt, becalmed, majestical, American-managed Gaza. It's beautiful, awesome, inspiring; world changing even. But how do we make an omelet without breaking a few eggs? Someone nudged me and said, "It's the Art of the Deal, Dumbo"! Just as novelists let their characters drive the outcome of the story, Trump will cajole Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia to come into Gaza, take control away from Hamas after Israel totally disarms the terror group, and rebuild Gaza with mostly Arab money and backed by U.S. prestige and power. Donald Trump can pull off Grand Designs, but is this one rooted in America First? Can he succeed without becoming the ogre he so deliciously defeated?
The sticking point for me is this: no nation has ever succeeded in "transferring" unwilling populations. Everybody's eye is on the dazzling result 20 years down the road. Nobody wants to focus on moving a recalcitrant and unwanted population out of the way.
Another rattlesnake in the woodpile: What kind of population will be permitted to return, or arrive for the first time, to this glamorous Mar-a-Gaza on the Mediterranean? A radicalized Palestinian population had previously stripped and trashed a relatively beautiful Gaza after Israel handed the sector over to the Palestinian Authority in 2006.
A pathologically anti-Jewish demographic can't be allowed to return to Gaza. Whoever comes back to Gaza must accept the existence of Israel as a fait accompli. Trump's deals are aways very fluid. He often throws outrageous ideas out for the explicit purpose of motivating central actors to begin talking and acting.
The Power of Positive vs. Faulty Thinking
What does Donald Trump really want by slamming this provocative idea on the table? When Trump muses aloud – whether he's bluffing, means it, or just fantasizing – he refashions the world as he talks. He's the most powerful man on the planet. Thus, the unthinkable becomes thinkable when he speaks it. Scary, perhaps, but thrilling, and Donald Trump knows it. His novel gambits and big swings are appealing in a profound way because American politics and aspirations should be exciting and should be infused with a sense of unprecedented possibility.
That sentiment has shaped our country from the start.
America's role in the world, even under America First, should never be to ensure the inertia and stasis of faulty thinking. On Gaza, that kind of thinking goes back 50 years. Trump sees no need to keep it going. Last week, Netanyahu said of Trump, "After the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say, You know he's right".
Instinctively, I too believe Trump is on to something.
“If you want something you've never had,” Thomas Jefferson is quoted as having said, “you must be willing to do something you've never done.” Donald Trump wants a lot of things that he's never had, and he does many things that no president has ever done. The world has never had a peaceful Gaza; so, he made a historically unique proposal. If nothing else, the world is already different for it.
Let's hope the story's main characters drive it toward a successful – and perhaps even happy – ending.
To even for a moment consider as rational and sane the idea to remove an "unwanted population" is to lose ones humanity. By what standard do you determine which population is "unwanted"? This is the kind of thinking we claim was the mentality of the Nazis that we take great national pride in having vanquished.
The Bacchanalian frenzy over "getting tired of winning" against so many tyrannical and frankly evil agendas is going to the heads of too many of us who have had to watch powerlessly one dehumanizing abuse after another: discrimination against white men, resources for people who illegally entered the country while Americans are passed over in their time of need, male athletes pounding female ones because they pretend to be women, drag queen story hour, abortion up until birth, impunity for violent criminals, a wide open border, and the list goes on.
Trump promised to stand against some of these, close the border, bring jobs home and to bring the peace dividend by ending the wasteful and counterproductive foreign wars.
Trump has made good on some of his promises with executive orders and executive power. The border seems to be much more secure and there is some enforcement against undocumented people who are breaking additional laws. There are at least statements against declaring a changed gender and there is at least an exposure of the abuse of tax payer funds to push depraved social agendas on people in other countries. We will see how far the house cleaning will go. All of this is welcome as we have seen so much lawlessness and engineered chaos.
But Trump is taking steps that are likely to bring us into a much more serious war with Iran, now allied with Russia. He has surrounded himself with ideologues who do not know or care about the realities of the Middle East. Many in the US don't realize how unpopular the US policies in Ukraine have been and are serving to unite the world in creating an alternative economic block that undermines US influence. Most Americans have no idea about the roots of the conflict in Israel and Palestine and get a very one sided picture of the conflict. The rest of the world sees the other side and is appalled by the US willingness to arm and fund Israel to starve and bomb 10's of thousands of women and children of a population that has no formal army to defend itself.
The US could be using its power to bolster international law and norms to promote trade and mutual cooperation over a might makes rights mo in the world. But Trump seems to be taking the latter path. This is a very dangerous and shortsighted strategy and he needs to be reminded that his mandate was to end conflict and work for peace.
We need to sober up or we will wake up tomorrow with much regret.
Trump is the most powerful man on this planet and acts like it which seems to be a huge relief for everyone from the Superbowl audience to Putin. Contrast this with four years of not knowing who the hell was running anything under Biden and we still don't know. I read the other day it was Hunter. The day before that Jill. The day before that it was Major dictating everything from his Delaware dog house. I personally don't feel unsettled under Trump like I did under Biden or whoever was supposedly running things.