Trump ‘floods the zone’ with bizarre AI video of future Gaza where he is king
Much of Trump’s social media output is content for content’s sake: the past 24 hours alone have been a grab bag of Fox News clips, short videos from the White House, an announcement about copper tariffs, criticism of Apple over diversity policies and angry broadsides at book authors and The Wall Street Journal. There’s no filter there.
It’s always worth remembering former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s instructive quote on these matters. “The real opposition is the media,” he told writer Michael Lewis in 2018. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
The Gaza video would appear to be a prime example of this. Then again, Trump is the president of the United States, so it has to be taken at least a bit seriously.
‘We don’t talk about that anymore’
He’s certainly keen to keep talking about the Middle East.
“We don’t even talk about that any more,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday while answering questions predominantly about Russia and Ukraine. “You guys haven’t asked one question about the Middle East. But the Middle East seems to be doing relatively well.”
In his extremely crass way, perhaps Trump is right to remind us that, despite the shaky ceasefire and hostage deal between Hamas and Israel, the situation in Gaza is wholly unresolved.
Mind games: Is Trump actually trying to draw attention to the unresolved situation in Gaza?Credit: AP
He brought it up again in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, US time. But when asked about the next steps, including a planned “phase two” of the ceasefire deal in which Israel would withdraw from Gaza, Trump largely washed his hands of it and deferred to Netanyahu. “Israel has to make that decision,” he said.
Trump noted the return of many hostages, as well as the bodies of dead Israelis killed by Hamas. “Very sad situation,” Trump said. “At some point, somebody’s gonna say, ‘We’re gonna do something about this’.”
It was a vague series of statements which, together with the bizarre Gaza video, suggests the president has mentally moved on from the guts of the conflict – or is at least temporarily occupied with Ukraine.
He wants to claim a win on the ceasefire and hostage deal and see if he can extract profit for the United States (and potentially for his property developer friends and himself) out of whatever happens next.
In that sense, astounding as the Gaza video was, it was vintage Trump.
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