Opinion | Trumps Gaza Plan Is a Crazy Answer to a Valid Question

President Trump’s plan to take over Gaza, remove its two million Palestinians and turn the coastal desert strip into some sort of Club Med proves only one thing: how short a distance it is between out-of-the-box thinking and out-of-your-mind thinking.I can say with confidence that Trump’s proposal is the single most idiotic and dangerous Middle East “peace” initiative ever put out by an American president.Still, I’m not sure what is more frightening: Trump’s Gaza proposal, which seems to change by the day, or the speed with which his aides and cabinet members — almost none of whom were even briefed on it in advance — nodded their approval to the idea like a collection of bobblehead dolls.Pay attention, ladies and gentlemen: This is not just about the Middle East.This is also a microcosm of the problem we now face as a country.

In his first term, President Trump was surrounded by buffers: aides, cabinet secretaries and generals who deflected and restrained his worst impulses many times.Now Trump is surrounded only by amplifiers: aides, cabinet secretaries, senators and House members who live in fear of his wrath or of being set upon by online mobs unleashed by his enforcer, Elon Musk, should they step out of line.This combination of Trump unleashed, Musk unrestrained and much of the government and the business establishment living in fear of being tweeted about by either man is a recipe for chaos at home and abroad.Trump is operating more like the Godfather than the president: “Nice little territory you have there (Greenland, Panama, Gaza, Jordan, Egypt) — be a shame if anything bad happened to it ….”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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