Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘It’s like our country is being run by the maniac from Saw’
Late-night hosts roundly mocked Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the Gaza Strip for a real estate development, forcibly removing 2 million Palestinians.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump made a shock announcement during a press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu: he wanted the US to take ownership of the Gaza Strip for a “fantastic” real estate development.
As Jimmy Kimmel explained on Wednesday evening, the “plan” would be to “remove the almost 2 million Palestinians who live there and build a really cool real estate development that we would own and I guess sell to others?”
“This is really what he wants to do,” he marveled. “It’s like our country is being run by the maniac from Saw. Donald Jigsaw Trump is running this.”
Related: Stephen Colbert on Trump’s first two weeks: ‘Like a chimp with a chainsaw’
“Of course, one of the big questions besides ‘are you out of your damn mind?’ is: if you pull out of the Palestinians out of Palestine, who would then live there?” he continued. Trump’s answer: “I envision a world of people living there. The world’s people.”
“The world’s people. Maybe the Village People, I don’t know,” Kimmel laughed. “You can see he’s really thought this through.”
“Every idea is worse than the last idea,” he added. “He seems to believe that there’s a conflict in Gaza because no one thought to give them a pickleball court. No matter what the crisis may be, everything always comes back to real estate with him.” Trump even went as far as branding the idea as “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
“Trump didn’t even have success with the Atlantic City of New Jersey, never mind the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’,” Kimmel quipped. At least, he added: “it’s never going to happen” in no small part because “the only thing that the United Nations and the Taliban have in common is they both think this is a terrible idea”.
Stephen Colbert
With Trump’s nascent presidency: “day after day, it is exactly what you thought but worse than you could’ve imagined”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “The crazy is coming fast and furious, and the furious is coming crazy and fast. He and his tech bro shock troops are violating so many laws and norms that it’s hard to know when something outrageous that he says or does is an atrocity or just a shiny distraction. Or maybe a shiny atrocity.”
Such as yesterday, when Trump declared that the US would take over the Gaza Strip. “Great idea. All these years, I don’t know why no one else thought to call shotgun on the Holy Land,” Colbert deadpanned. “And once we – and he’s not clear on who ‘we’ is – own it, you’ll never guess what this luxury real estate developer wants to do with it.”
“Yes, the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’,” Colbert joked. “The Cancún of Crises. The Sandals of Sadness. The Carnival Cruise of War Crime.”
“Now, you might be asking: what about the Palestinians who live there?” he continued. “Don’t worry. Or do, if you have a shred of humanity, because Trump does not.” When asked how many Palestinians would have to be displaced for his luxury real estate development, Trump answered: “All of them.”
“You’re going to forcibly relocate almost 2 million people, half of whom are children?” Colbert fumed. “How many of our moral principles would America have to violate to support this?” To quote Trump, as Colbert did: all of them.
“So after the new and improved Trail of Tears, who is going to live in these haunted honeymoon suites?” Colbert continued. According to Trump, “I envision a world of people living there. The world’s people.”
“The world’s people? Is he confusing Gaza with Epcot?” Colbert quipped.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers examined how Trump’s Gaza proposal undercuts his years of “America First” isolationist promises. “Now Trump has apparently done some thinking and decided that actually, the problem with George W Bush is that he didn’t do enough nation-building in the Middle East,” he joked. “So now Trump has an unhinged and obviously illegal plan to go even further in a part of the world where we will definitely be welcome with open arms.”
The furor over Trump’s surprise idea represents “the same old trap we’re always in”, said Meyers, “of not knowing if this is a real idea or just Trump distracting us while Casper the very unfriendly ghost” – Elon Musk – “dismantles the federal government”.
Trump, for his part, is insisting it’s a serious proposal. “I think it’s important to say: we should never have gotten to this point to begin with,” Meyers noted. “Joe Biden should’ve demanded a ceasefire a long time ago. It’s what the majority of voters wanted, and if there were any voters who were upset with Biden over that, it is his fault and not theirs. He could’ve to appealed to those voters by ending US support for the war, instead of acting like a powerless bystander.”
Instead, we’re here, Meyers added, and the plan shows: “Trump is a hypocrite and liar who contradicts himself. Everyone knows that. But more than that, his abandonment of America First shows us once again that Maga populism is a scam.”
