There have always been reasons to worry about Trump’s mental acuity–his sense of grandiosity, his constant boasting, his memory lapses, his serial lies, his frequent confusion of names–but now there is more reason to worry.

Yesterday he said in a press conference that he wants all the people who live in the Gaza Strip to move somewhere else, leaving their land to be cleared and developed by Americans. Trump wants to turn Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” A few years back, his son-in-law Jared Kushner speculated that Gaza’s beachfront made it ideal as a setting for luxury resorts.

Jared has since moved on to other promising spots, like Albania, where he plans to build a $1.4 billion luxury mega-resort on an island, investing some of the billions that the Saudis gave him.

Apparently, Trump’s basic instincts as a developer have come to the fore. Aside from the fact that Arab nations are opposed to Trump’s plan, there is one obvious problem: What to do with the Gazans who live there? He hasn’t figured that out yet, and to date the other Arab nations have loudly said that they don’t want the Gazans.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stood with Trump and loved what he heard. It bolsters him with his rightwing coalition partners, according to the Israeli publication Ha’aretz, and bolsters his intransigence. How he would love to have an American-owned strip of land on his borders.

Trump doesn’t want to help rebuild Gaza; he wants to own it.

Dana Milbank paid attention.

Milbank wrote:

“Genocide Joe” never looked so good.

Gaza peace protesters rallied Americans by the hundreds of thousands to oppose President Joe Biden and vote “uncommitted” in Democratic primaries. They heckled Vice President Kamala Harris and disrupted her events.

On Election Day, Donald Trump prevailed in the majority-Arab town of Dearborn, Michigan. And across the country, many young voters stayed home or even voted for Trump — likely because, in part, they were disenchanted that the Biden administration had been insufficiently tough on Israel.

How’s that working out now?

Trump, hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, made the stunning declaration that he wants all Palestinians removed from Gaza — permanently.

“All of them,” Trump said. “I mean, we’re talking about probably a million-seven people, a million-seven, maybe a million-eight. But I think all of them. I think they’ll be resettled in areas where they can live a beautiful life and not be worried about dying every day.”

And what would become of Gaza after all Palestinians were evicted? At a formal news conference with Netanyahu in the East Room a couple of hours later, Trump unveiled his next proposal: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. … We’ll own it.”

Huh?

“You are talking tonight about the U.S. taking over a sovereign territory. What authority would allow you to do that?” an incredulous Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News asked. “Are you talking about a permanent occupation?”

“I do see a long-term ownership position,” Trump answered, as though the Palestinian enclave were a hotel property on the market. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”

Greenland, Panama, Canada and now Gaza: The sun will never set on Trump’s colonial empire.

A moment later, the president said he was also considering evicting the Palestinians from the West Bank and awarding that territory to Israel.

“We’re discussing that,” Trump said when asked about giving Israel control over biblical “Judea and Samaria,” which includes the West Bank. “And people do like the idea.” He promised an announcement “on that very specific topic over the next four weeks.”

From the river to the sea, Palestine will cease to exist. As those uncommitted voters now know: Elections have consequences.

Trump’s elimination of all Palestinian land went even farther than Netanyahu’s expansionist designs — but the prime minister liked what he heard. “President Trump is taking it to a much higher level,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference. “I think it’s something that could change history and it’s worth us really pursuing this.” Netanyahu took multiple opportunities to bash Biden and to gush over Trump for sending him weapons that Biden had withheld, and for lifting Biden’s sanctions against Israeli settlers accused of violence in the West Bank.

Trump was proposing an act of towering cruelty. The world still hasn’t figured out what to do about the existing Palestinian refugees — 1.5 million of whom live in refugee camps in the region. Now, Trump plans to make refugees of some 2 million additional Palestinians. Or perhaps 5 million more, if he’s also planning to evict them from the West Bank.

But Trump presented his plans to remove Palestinians from their homeland as a humanitarian gesture. “Gaza is not a place for people to be living,” he reasoned during his Oval Office session. Though he hasn’t actually visited the place, “I’ve seen every picture from every angle, better than if I were there. And nobody can live there.”

Journalists reported the story as if this was a realistic proposal by the American President. But it is not. It’s madness. It violates international laws (but we know by now that Trump thinks he is not constrained by law.) It is raw imperialism and colonialism. It is wildly impractical. It is the proposal of a man who is unhinged, out of touch with reality: a madman. We always have known that Trump creates chaos wherever he goes. The only thing more absurd that he neglected to mention is that the Trump Organization would get the contract to clear and rebuild the Riviera of the Middle East.