Donald Trump closes Saudi investment forum with ‘YMCA’
Donald Trump ended his speech in Saudi Arabia with “YMCA,” a song associated with the LGBTQ+ community, in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
Call it the art of rebranding.
President Donald Trump has a new proposal for the redevelopment of Gaza — and it is decidedly less flashy sounding.
Just months after saying the U.S. should take over the war-torn seaside Palestinian territory and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” Trump now wants to make it “a freedom zone,” giving fresh life to a controversial foreign policy proposal.
“Gaza has been a territory of death and destruction for many years,” Trump told reporters after a roundtable with business leaders in Qatar on May 14. “Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.”
Trump first floated the idea in February of U.S. ownership of the beleaguered Gaza Strip to bring “peace” to what he described as a “demolition site.” He also said Palestinians living there should be relocated, which some experts described as amounting to ethnic cleansing.The current conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and took roughly 250 hostages into Gaza. More than 52,000 Palestinians have died from Israel’s subsequent invasion and bombardment of Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry.
Trump first announced his desire to develop the enclave on Feb. 4 during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We’ll do a job with it. We will own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous bombs and other weapons,” he said. “We will level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Later in the month, Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting an imaginary Trump Gaza luxury resort with images of him sipping cocktails with Netanyahu and featuring a life-size golden statue of himself parked outside the entrance.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal