Stephen A. Smith has joined an alarmed refrain of pundits denouncing President Donald Trump for his proposal Tuesday that “the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.” The sports activities commentator minced no phrases Thursday in reacting on his titular “Stephen A. Smith Show.”
“You have no business doing that,” he stated about Trump. “Do you understand how the Gaza Strip has been ravaged? Do you understand what that area of this world looks like right now? … You have any idea? Have you seen the footage? Have you seen the wreckage?”
“It’s been reduced to rubble,” Smith continued. “It’s [un]inhabitable right now.”
Trump introduced Tuesday throughout a information convention, after months of marketing campaign guarantees final 12 months to convey peace to the Mideast, that he needs the U.S. to “own” the 139 sq. miles of war-torn rubble — and develop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that greater than 46,000 folks have been killed there since Hamas killed greater than 1,200 in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Smith railed towards Trump on Thursday for arguing that the surviving inhabitants ought to merely be relocated after 15 months of bombardment.
“We’re talking about the displacement of potentially more than a million people,” stated Smith concerning the besieged inhabitants of refugees. “And this man is there last night with [Israel Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Netanyahu, who has been accused of conflict crimes by the Worldwide Legal Courtroom, was beside Trump on Tuesday. He reportedly gifted Trump a golden beeper in a nod to Israel’s covert assault final 12 months towards suspected terrorists in Lebanon and Syria.
The assaults in September wounded hundreds of individuals — and killed at the very least two youngsters.
Evan Vucci / Related Press
Israel stated Thursday that preparations for the forcible elimination of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have already begun. The identical day, Trump signed an order imposing sanctions towards the Worldwide Legal Courtroom over its Israel probes.
The plan to flatten and rebuild Gaza, in the meantime, appears to have been floated for some time.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Center East envoy through the president’s first time period, stated throughout an occasion at Harvard in 2024 that Gaza’s waterfront property “could be very valuable” — and, “from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Smith appeared genuinely disturbed Thursday about Trump shifting ahead with this imaginative and prescient, notably as he ran on an “America First” platform to remain out of international conflicts.
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“I thought he didn’t want American soldiers in harm’s way,” stated Smith on his present. “What do you think is going to happen if he follows through? That’s not safe … for America, because you’ll exacerbate the ire the Arab world already feels for the United States.”
