Out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow slammed Donald Trump for saying that he wants the U.S. to invade Gaza, highlighting that it is not one of the things he campaigned on and that it would likely be an unpopular move.

Trump said, “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” at a press conference yesterday. “We’ll own it … We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal … the Riviera of the Middle East.”

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Donald Trump’s plan to “clean out” Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing
Trump’s geopolitical ignorance has him trying to pour gasoline over the flames of Gaza.

He then promised that the U.S. would ethnically cleanse the region.

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“We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck,” he said.

Trump’s foreign policy promises during the campaign were largely isolationist. He claimed that he would be able to instantly negotiate peaceful resolutions to the conflict in Israel and Palestine and end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all while withdrawing the U.S. from NATO and reducing military involvement in the rest of the world.

Maddow pointed out that his promise to invade, occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza would involve a “long-term U.S. military operation” that would likely be massively unpopular.

“Tonight Trump, I guess, is saying he’s gonna send U.S. troops in to occupy the Gaza Strip,” Maddow said incredulously. “To level it and depopulate it of its population. He says that’s gonna be a long-term U.S. military operation.”

“Okay, sure. Yeah. The American people definitely voted for sending troops into Gaza? Is that what this election was about? You think you’ve got a big Trump mandate for that? Corporal Vance, you’re going to suit back up for that?”

Maddow effectively made an observation on one side of a debate currently raging among liberals. While many people on social media are quick to dismiss Trump’s bad actions as what a plurality of people voted for in November 2024, others have been pointing out that many of his actions – like implementing Project 2025, putting a private citizen in charge of the Treasury’s payment system, and ending foreign aid for people living with HIV – were either things he didn’t campaign on last year or even moves he specifically disavowed on the campaign trail.

On foreign policy, Trump said that he would take an “America First” approach that would involve fewer military deployments. While he said that the U.S. would “stand proudly” with Israel, he didn’t say anything about a U.S.-led occupation of Gaza.

But after his inauguration, Trump started ramping up his language on Gaza.

“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said last week.

“I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now,” he continued. “Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

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