I had just finished watching Trump's press conference in the White House with Benjamin Netanyahu. The words in the headline for this column were spoken by Donald Trump in his prepared remarks about what he is going to do to Gaza. It's a cliche to say that Trump frequently talks like he's a still a real estate developer, but cliches can be true and tonight this one was.

He told the whole world that he’s going to take over Gaza and level it and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

For Donald Trump the world is now a gigantic real estate deal. He called Gaza “a demolition site.” Yes, dear readers, standing next to the man who bombed Gaza nearly flat, that's what Trump called it. "We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site," Trump went on as Netanyahu could barely suppress a smile. "We’ll level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out, create an economic development. There will be thousands of jobs.”

But first Gaza’s new viceroy will have to deal with the people who live there, the two million or so Palestinians who after more than a year of punishing bombardment by the Israeli military still call Gaza home. Since the United States will be not only running the territory but will own it – Trump said, “I see a long term ownership position in Gaza” -- he plans on removing the Palestinian people to other countries in the Middle East which he claims will be eager to take them. Reporters couldn't get him to name those countries. Presumably he's talking about Jordan and Egypt and the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, none of which have expressed any interest in stepping up and helping out with the problem that Gaza has become for the world.

Jordan's population is already sixty percent Palestinian because of the Palestinians who have been relocated there as refugees over the last 70 years. On January 26 Trump said of Gaza that he'd like to “just clean out the whole thing.” His suggestion that Jordan and Egypt should accept the Gazan Palestinians was met by what PBS news called a “hard no.”

And yet there Trump was, standing next to Netanyahu before a stunned press corps and some cheering White House staffers in the back, saying “Everybody I talked to thinks it's a marvelous idea that the U.S. owns this piece of land; it's a tremendous positive. Leaders of other countries in the Middle East love the idea.”

Asked by a reporter who he saw living in his purported Palm Beach on the Mediterranean, Trump said, “The world's people. I think you'll make that into an international, unbelievable place." Pressed by another reporter if he saw Palestinians living alongside the “world’s people,” Trump clearly didn't want to answer the question but finally said yes, along with Israelis and “anyone else who wants to live there. I see the world's people living there in harmony and peace.”

Trump proceeded to launch into another real estate pitch, talking about how beautiful it would be, how fantastic, he even bragged that Gaza would be better under U.S. ownership “than anyone has ever seen.”

Because of course he did.

In response to another question from the press corps that clearly could not believe what it was witnessing, Trump said that he would use the United States military to carry out his plans for Gaza. “We'll do whatever it takes,” Trump bragged.

I don't know what's been going on in the White House over the last two weeks, none of us really do, although we can see the effects over at the emptied out USAID and Department of Education, but with his pal Elon Musk acting like some kind of vengeful South African Caesar, the Donald Trump who sold himself during the campaign as an isolationist, who said his presidency will be measured not in wars we got into but in wars we avoided, has transformed himself into an American Alexander, a conqueror who thinks he can take his newly acquired military might and do to the world anything he wants to do.

Chaim Weitzmann, the first president of Israel, infamously called Palestinians “rocks of Judea, obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path." And now comes Donald Trump who proposes treating the Palestinians of Gaza like rubble that must be removed in order to create his dream of a Mediterranean Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has already said that he will “take back the Panama Canal” and he's talking about using the United States military to seize Greenland, which he claims is necessary for our “national security.”

At his press conference tonight, standing alongside a man the International Court of Law has already charged with war crimes, Donald Trump proposed to the whole world that he wants the United States to commit the war crime of ethnic cleansing by removing the Palestinian people – all two million-plus of them -- from Gaza.

Earlier yesterday, on the way back from an appointment to see an orthopedist about my broken wrist, Tracy and I were lamenting what's going on in Washington DC, as Elon Musk and his teenage hit men attempt their technological destruction of government agencies that were established by acts of Congress and have been in existence for decades. We were talking about how depressed everyone is and how it doesn't seem like there's anything that we as loyal American citizens can do about this rape of our democracy.

At that very hour, Trump was meeting with the first foreign leader he has invited to the White House to discuss jointly committing an unthinkable war crime in the Middle East.

It was bad this morning, it was worse this afternoon, and this evening we learn that the convicted criminal who was elected our president has now declared that he is at the helm of rogue state. It is 1939 all over again.

God help us all.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.