Trump’s Greatest Con is Genocide

Among all the cons that Donald Trump has pushed on the world, none has compared to his plan for facilitating genocide in Gaza.

While his administration has continued providing Israel with the weapons that it is using to destroy Gaza, the U.S. president has been making a business pitch in favor of genocide. By proposing to depopulate Gaza and develop it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” Trump has been trying to persuade the world’s wealthiest people that they can gain from the destruction of the territory. Although the media has shifted its focus away from Trump’s proposal, he continues to promote it.

“Think about it,” Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said in a speech from the Senate floor on May 8. “2.2 million desperate people who have been bombed and starved and driven from their homes are now about to be forcibly expelled from their territory into God knows where so that Trump and his friends can build a Riviera for the billionaire class.”

U.S. Appeals to Genocide

In the United States, there is a long history of U.S. leaders making arguments in favor of genocide. Although the term genocide was not coined until World War II as part of an effort to condemn the Nazis for the Holocaust and hold them legally accountable for their crimes against humanity, previous generations of U.S. officials had developed arguments for eliminating entire groups of people.

For centuries, some of the most influential U.S. politicians envisioned the eradication of Native Americans. Benjamin Franklin thought that it could be “the design of Providence to extirpate these savages,” as he called indigenous people. Their elimination would “make room for the cultivators of the earth,” meaning Anglo-American settlers.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the United States would commit genocide against Native Americans. In a reference to what he called “backward” groups of Native Americans, Jefferson wrote that “we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest, into the stony mountains.” Attacks by Native Americans against U.S. settlers “will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.”

Often, U.S. officials have appealed to notions of manifest destiny, or the idea that God has chosen U.S. settlers to inhabit all of America. In 1845, the prominent political writer John O’Sullivan popularized the notion when he wrote about “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.”

Trump has made appeals to manifest destiny, including one in his second inaugural address, but his arguments in favor of genocide in Gaza have been different. Rather than claiming that he is trying to create living space for settlers from Israel or the United States, he has made a business pitch to the world’s elite, casting them as the primary beneficiaries of genocide in Gaza.

When Trump first called for the United States to “take over the Gaza Strip,” he presented a vision in which Gaza would be completely emptied of Palestinians to become one of the most luxurious resort areas in the world.

“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal,” the president said. Gaza can become “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

On social media, the president boasted that his plan would result in “one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.”

Trump was not alone in his vision. David Friedman, who had been the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the first Trump administration, declared his support, even floating the idea of renaming Gaza after Mar-a-Lago, the president’s estate in Florida. Friedman’s suggestions for new names included Mar-a-Gaza and Gaz-a-Lago.

Trump faced pushback to his plans, with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan quickly rebuffing his requests to resettle Palestinians in their countries, but the president continued to promote his vision.

After the U.S. mass media began suggesting that the president might be backing away from his proposal due to opposition from Arab leaders, Trump shared on social media an AI-generated video in which Gaza had been paved over to become an opulent resort. In one of its most jarring moments, the video included a scene in which Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounged by a pool and enjoyed drinks together, seemingly taking pride in what they had done.

Genocide Denial

As Trump has made his business pitch for the destruction of Gaza, he has been careful to deny that he is calling for genocide.

A key part of the president’s con has been to continually make the false claim that the Palestinians want to leave Gaza. Time and again, Trump has argued that it only makes sense for the Palestinians to leave Gaza given the way in which they have been treated.

“They’ve been persecuted, they’ve been spit on, they’ve been treated like trash,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters on February 10. “They would love to get out of Gaza.”

The president also has denied that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Taking the same position as his predecessor Joe Biden, whom he often blames for what is happening, Trump has made the case that Israel is taking necessary action to respond to Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.

Trump has even suggested that he wished Biden had thought to depopulate Gaza and make it into a playground for the rich.

“It would have been so great if the Biden administration would have started this,” the president said on February 11. “Because of the fact that they let this happen—this catastrophe of October 7—something like this becomes practical and very real, meaning the development and all of the things that I’ve talked about with respect to the Gaza Strip.”

Regardless of Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Biden, he has embraced many of the former president’s policies on Gaza and Israel. In another similarity, Trump has opposed efforts by the international community to hold Israel to its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent and halt genocide.

When Trump was asked on May 21 what he thought of the case against Israel before the World Court, he responded with disinterest.

“We’ll have a ruling, and who knows what the ruling is going to mean,” he said.

Genocide in Gaza

Trump may have maintained Biden’s position of genocide denial, but there is strong evidence that Israel is waging a campaign of extermination against Palestinians in Gaza. From the final months of the Biden administration to the initial months of the second Trump administration, several influential organizations have concluded that Israel has been committing some of the world’s worst crimes against humanity in Gaza.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court provided a strong signal that Israel is committing major crimes when it issued warrants for the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The court charged both men with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Not long after the court issued its arrest warrants, several of the world’s leading human rights organizations then published major reports in which they presented evidence of genocide in Gaza. In December 2024, Amnesty International noted in a major study that “Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” That same month, Human Rights Watch published its own report in which it found Israel responsible for acts of genocide and the crime of extermination.

The U.S. and Israeli governments have denied the charges, accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism, but their denialism is increasingly coming under doubt. Just last month, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused the Israeli government of waging “a war of extermination,” which he characterized as the “indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.”

In fact, Trump himself has repeatedly indicated that Israel may have committed genocide in Gaza. In statement after statement, he has characterized Gaza as a “demolition site.” Perhaps most damning to Israel, the president has suggested that the Palestinian way of life has been eradicated from Gaza.

“A civilization has been wiped out in Gaza,” Trump said on February 11, in remarks that were largely ignored by the U.S. mass media.

Nouveau Genocide

In spite of the efforts of human rights organizations to hold Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza, Trump continues to promote his plan for genocide. Having embraced Netanyahu, whom he has welcomed to the White House on two separate occasions, Trump has made it his mission to depopulate Gaza and make it into a vacation area for the world’s richest people.

When Trump welcomed Netanyahu to the White House in early April, he was quick to raise his plan for Gaza once again.

“You know how I feel about the Gaza Strip,” Trump stated. “I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate.”

Seated alongside Trump, Netanyahu signaled his agreement, acknowledging his support for the president’s proposal to depopulate Gaza.

“The president has a vision,” Netanyahu said. “Countries are responding to that vision. We’re working on it.”

Just last month, Netanyahu even indicated that the implementation of Trump’s plan is now a condition for Israel to end its military operations. Speaking to the press, Netanyahu announced that he is “ready to end the war” once certain conditions are met, including one for Israel to “carry out the Trump plan.”

So far, most officials in Washington have done nothing to stand in Trump’s way. Despite the fact that Congress could make it very difficult for Israel to continue its military operations in Gaza by simply blocking U.S. military assistance, it has opted instead to continue allowing the Trump administration to send Israel the weapons that it is using to destroy the territory.

Only a few congressional leaders are willing to speak against U.S. policy toward Gaza. One is Senator Sanders, who has repeatedly called on his colleagues to stop funding Israel’s destruction of the territory.

“History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare,” Sanders said on May 8. “The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people.”

Another critic of U.S. policy is Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian American member of Congress. Like Sanders, Tlaib has repeatedly condemned the U.S. government for its role in the destruction of Gaza.

“Our country is complicit… because our nation is funding this genocide,” she said on May 15.

Regardless, the Trump administration continues pursuing its ambitions. Facing little pushback in Washington, the administration may just succeed with what may be one of its most horrific acts so far: its depraved attempt to sell the world on a glitzy and glamorous vision of genocide.

“That is a form of nouveau ethnic cleansing,” U.S. Representative Al Green (D-TX) has remarked.