Donald Trump shocked the world in February this year when he spoke of his plans to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and turn it into a new branch of his property empire.
Against a background of Israel’s controversial war with Palestine, he said: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too, We’ll own it.”
In response, Los Angeles-based film-maker Solo Avital created a deliberately tasteless AI video depicting Trump’s plans – which the US president proudly reposted to his profile on his own Truth Social social media service. One expert describes how the blunder demonstrates the “alternate reality” that Trump is living in.
Speaking on a new Channel 4 documentary, Trump Revolution: 100 Days That Changed the World, former Pentagon advisor Jasmine El Gamal, said that the clip was deliberately offensive: “You had a Trump tower in Gaza, everything was gold, you had Netanyahu and Trump sipping cocktails by the pool – it shocked a lot of people.”
Jasmine, who was a Pentagon Middle East Advisor for the Obama administration between 2008 and 2017, said that the filmmaker could not have predicted how Trump would react to the satirical clip: “To their surprise and shock, Donald Trump shared it.”
She added: “I think it just goes back to this alternate reality that I think that he and his team are living in, where you can’t even see when someone is mocking an idea of yours.”
Solo Avital, who made the viral clip, told the Guardian that seeing Trump had shared the video had “surprised the hell” out of him.
“We are storytellers, we’re not provocateurs,” he said, adding: “We sometimes do satire pieces such as this one was supposed to be.
“This is the duality of the satire: it depends what context you bring to it to make the punchline or the joke. Here there was no context and it was posted without our consent or knowledge.”
It’s unclear whether Trump realised he was being mocked, and had chosen to try to subvert the satire by taking ownership of it, or had simply not understood that the tastelessly gaudy representation of “Trump Gaza” was supposed to be a joke.
Certainly, in recent weeks, Trump’s mental capacity has been called into question. The 78-year-old president reportedly left the stage after making his controversial “Liberation Day” tariffs speech, and had to be guided back in order to sign the bill that put the legislation into effect at midnight.
Video of the incident shows Trump smiling and waving to the assembled crowd before walking off and chatting with another official, who gently guides him back to the desk.
At just under 79, Trump is the oldest person in American history to be inaugurated as president.
Despite a statement by his doctor, Captain Sean Barbabella, some outside experts have speculated that Trump may be showing symptoms of dementia, which is known to run in his family.
Immediately after Dr Barbabella’s examination Trump told reporters that he “got every answer right” on the mental capacity test. “Overall, I felt I was in very good shape,” he added. “A good heart, a good soul, a very good soul.”
According to Dr Barbabella’s statement after the annual physical exam, the president weighs 224lb (16 stone) and stands just over 6’ 2” tall, although numerous sources have disputed those figures – pointing out that this estate would put him on par with professional athletes, such as Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver AJ Brown.
Trump Revolution: 100 Days That Changed the World airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
