The Madness of Donald Trump

More than five hundred years ago, Machiavelli, the philosopher of political practice and modern republicanism, suggested, in “Discourses on Livy,” that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Richard Nixon, according to his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, apparently arrived at a similar conclusion, saying, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

On Tuesday, President Trump appeared alongside the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the East Room at the White House, and declared that the two million Palestinians in Gaza should be forced out of the Strip. The United States would “take over” Gaza and “own” it. The Palestinians, after having suffered tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of countless homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and other infrastructure, would, it appears, have nothing to say about any of this and would be sent . . . elsewhere. Egypt. Jordan. Whatever. It hardly seemed to matter to Trump that such a policy represents ethnic cleansing. Morality is of no interest when there is a real-estate deal to be made.

“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal, and I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East—this could be something that could be so—this could be so magnificent,” Trump said. (The Riviera: “A sunny place for shady people,” as W. Somerset Maugham put it.) “We’ll make sure that it’s done world-class,” Trump went on, building on the real-estate pitch. As he’d noted earlier in the day, “It doesn’t have to be one area, but you take certain areas and you build really good-quality housing, like a beautiful town, like some place where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying.”

Netanyahu expressed confidence that the plan would “usher in the peace with Saudi Arabia and with others.” The Saudis issued an official statement rejecting Trump’s proposal, but the newly minted yes-men performed on cue: Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted that “the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again.”

As Trump spoke, Netanyahu could not resist a smile so broad that it must have ached after a while. He could not have imagined a greater gift from the American President or the provision of greater political cover back home. His gratitude was boundless, and he knew well enough to slather on the grease of flattery. “I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu said to Trump, for the cameras. “I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all of these goals.”

Netanyahu’s cheerleaders in the Israeli press, such as Amit Segal, of Channel 12, hailed the news, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the leaders of the annexationist wing of Israeli politics, tweeted, “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Amos Harel, the well-respected reporter and analyst for Haaretz, the liberal daily, told me, “The right wing here is euphoric. There is no way to figure this out. Maybe Trump is more delusional than I thought. He has more energy than Biden, but . . . wow.”

This is not the first time that the Trump family, which has made substantial financial investments in the region in recent years, has envisioned Gaza for its resort potential. Last February, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said in an interview at Harvard University that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable . . . . It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” Kushner has retreated from White House politics, remaining for now in Miami, but he views himself as a grand strategist of the Middle East. At Harvard, he said that “proactively recognizing” a Palestinian state would be a “super-bad idea.”

After watching Trump and Netanyahu, I spoke with Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University, in Gaza, who has been teaching this year at Northwestern University. “I’m depressed, man,” he told me. “I don’t even know what will happen, but I do know that the Palestinians are against this and would rather live in tents and in the rubble of their destroyed homes than leave. And we all know that the neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, have said no to this idea.” King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, both see an increased Palestinian population in their countries as a demographic and political threat to their regimes. Also, although both countries have long-standing peace treaties with Israel, it is unclear how Trump’s proposal and Netanyahu’s pleasure in its pronouncement might affect those arrangements.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat and analyst of the Middle East, told me that his “head was exploding” as he watched Trump. “In twenty-seven years of working for Democrats and Republicans, I’ve never heard a press conference like this,” he said.

Miller, of course, is aware that Trump’s intention, always, is to shock, to play the madman, and thus frighten his rivals and alter the terms of the debate. Maybe, just maybe, it will all dissipate, Miller suggested. Trump habitually says outrageous things, watches how they land, and, often enough, distances himself from his own provocations. (Will he seize Greenland? The Panama Canal? Make Canada the fifty-first state?) Perhaps Trump thinks he’ll be able to prop up Netanyahu at home and so deeply alarm other Middle Eastern leaders that he will be able to both muscle Iran into a deal that ends its nuclear ambitions and complete a broader regional settlement with Saudi coöoperation. Or perhaps Trump’s latest performance is of a piece with the strategy of “flooding the zone” with so much chaos and deceptive rhetoric, and with so many mind-altering proposals and appointments, that, while the establishment’s collective head explodes on an hourly basis, he achieves at least some of his fondest ambitions.

And yet it seems inevitable that there will be a price for all the madness. Miller cautioned that, although Trump may back away from his proposal of ethnic cleansing and Riviera creation, such a performance sends a particularly dangerous message: “It is a nod to Putin that he can keep the territory he’s taken in Ukraine, and to Xi, who might now have more confidence about establishing a blockade of Taiwan in preparation for an invasion. It all reflects the mindset of an unserious man.”

Nixon considered himself to be a profound thinker on global strategy. And yet it’s important to recall that, though he might have convinced himself that his act would bring the North Vietnamese leadership to heel, that misbegotten war ended in American defeat. Similarly, Putin’s veiled nuclear threats during his war on Ukraine, and Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” against North Korea, in 2017, hardly proved decisive, much less constructive. The President’s decision to deploy, yet again, a display of chaotic bravado—an enactment of the Madman Theory, if that’s what it is—will do nothing to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, and brings disgrace to the United States. ♦