Is ‘Gaz-a-Lago’ a harbinger of doom — or dumb?

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Sandwiched somewhere between his calls to stop funding colleges that allow “illegal protests,” threatening to take Greenland “one way or the other” and kicking wartorn Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House, President Donald Trump reposted a bizarre video on his social media account that left the world scratching its collective head.

The AI-generated video is like a nightmare vision you’d see after battling a fever for three weeks. Set to a syncopated beat, it bursts in with a banner that reads, “GAZA 2025 WHAT’S NEXT?” and jump cuts to a family picking barefoot through rubble in a bombed-out street before its members emerge into a skyscraper-filled, American-styled development some are calling “Gaz-a-Lago” online. All the while a robotic AI voice sings, “Donald’s coming to set you free/ bringing the light for all to see/ no more tunnels, no more fear/ Trump Gaza is finally here,” before the beat drops and things really get weird.

There are symbols crammed into this 35-second video. Lots of symbols. While we’re used to the propaganda Trump shares on social media —  like clips showing his face superimposed on a wrestler who is body-slamming CNN to the mat; others that present lewd and hostile attacks on his many perceived enemies; and, finally, dozens of unhinged reposted QAnon conspiracies — Trump’s Gaza video repost hits a little different.

The video comes, of course, after Trump promoted the idea of expelling 2.1 million Palestinians from Gaza, “leveling the site” and transforming it into a “Riviera of the Middle East” that would be owned by the United States — a proposal that has been called “disgraceful” and “a serious violation of international law,” among other colorful descriptions.

The video has it all: AI-generated clips of Elon Musk chowing down on hummus, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging shirtless by the beach sipping cocktails, bearded and bikini-clad belly dancers, a child holding a golden balloon in the shape of Trump’s head, Elon Musk dancing on the beach as U.S. dollars rain down upon him, a North Korean-esque golden statue of Trump looming over those walking below and shops filled with golden miniature Trump statues for sale. 

After receiving forceful pushback from Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, Trump told Fox News in late February that, “The way to do it is my plan. I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.”

Meanwhile, Wassel Abu Yousuf, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, told CNN that the video was “a clowning gimmick and nothing more than that,” and, “There will not be resorts or Middle East Riviera or anything else. What Trump wants to do should be done somewhere else, but not on the backs of the Palestinian people. This is the land of our ancestors and parents, and a lot of blood has been shed to defend it.”

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has endorsed Trump’s Gaza ownership plan, calling it a “bold plan of reconstruction.”

But who, actually, created the Trump Gaza video in the first place? As usual, with anything in Trumpworld, it’s complicated.

The video’s creators, Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen, are two of the co-founders of Los Angeles-based EyeMix Visuals, which uses AI to create commercials and promotional media. The pair told NBC News the project was created as satire while they experimented with AI software called Arcana.

Also, the two aren’t sure how the video ended up in Trump’s wee little hands. Vroman said he shared an early version of the video with Mel Gibson, who Trump named as a special ambassador to Hollywood, but Gibson denied sharing it with the president.

Vroman and Avital — who are both from Israel and live in the U.S. — said while testing the AI software, they were attempting to create a video in just eight hours. At exactly the same moment they began work, Trump was announcing his Gaza development plan and the pair said, “Hey, why don’t we do that? Let’s do a little satire?”

Vroman said he played with the idea of Trump turning Gaza into Las Vegas, saying that while the video was satire, he thought Trump’s proposal was “forward-thinking.”

Vroman said that while he was peeved at being used by Trump as a “propaganda machine,” he also said Trump’s proposal was a “gazillion times better than what it is right now, whether it’s good or bad.” 

He expanded on the “context” of the video by claiming the real intent was to show that Gaza will be “so liberated that it will become woke.” 

Perhaps that’s where the bearded belly dancers came from.

After Trump reposted the video, Vroman said he was “shocked,” because, among other images, it showed Trump “standing erected in the center of the city as a golden statue, like some sort of dictator.” (Isn’t there something in the Bible about this? Something something golden idols? Oh well… moving on.)

While some laugh it off and say, “Trump’s just trolling people,” his proposal for Gaza compares with his calls for “taking” Greenland and the Panama Canal for “national security reasons.” These are sovereign nations. This kind of rhetoric is how wars begin.

No matter where the video came from or what its intended purpose was supposed to be, the fact that our president posted it as some kind of visual promotional brochure about his plans for the Middle East should be enough to cause alarm to even his most ardent supporters. 

Instead, the video was just lost in the never-ending slog of propaganda and doom that is our world in this foul year of our lord, 2025.