By Luke Broadwater and Michael Crowley
Top Trump administration officials directly contradicted the president Wednesday after he proposed that the United States “take over” the Gaza Strip and drive out the Palestinian population, insisting that he had not committed to using U.S. troops and that any relocation of Palestinians would be temporary.
In a stunning news conference Tuesday alongside the Israeli prime minister, Trump said the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave.
Asked if he would send U.S. troops, Trump said: “We’ll do what is necessary. And if it’s necessary, we’ll do that. We’re going to take over that piece.”
On Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters something different.
“The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza,” Leavitt said. She did not specify how the United States could take control of Gaza without military force, though she said Trump would be meeting with other leaders in the region to discuss next steps.
She also said that any displacement of Palestinians would be temporary. Trump had said that he viewed the United States as taking “a long-term ownership position” in Gaza and that Gaza would become a place “not for a specific group of people but for everybody.”
Leavitt said: “The president has made it clear that they need to be temporarily relocated out of Gaza for the rebuilding of this effort. Again, it’s a demolition site right now. It’s not a livable place for any human being. And I think it’s actually quite evil to suggest that people should live in such dire conditions.”
Trump often makes comments that go beyond what his aides wish he would say, and sometimes they try to walk them back. But the only statements that really matter are Trump’s.
Around the same time as Leavitt’s briefing, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, also tried to walk back some of Trump’s comments. He suggested that Trump was only proposing to clear out and rebuild Gaza, not claim indefinite possession of it.
“The only thing President Trump has done — very generously, in my view — is offer the United States’ willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction,” including unexploded munitions “so that then people can move back in,” Rubio said.
And, Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, told Republican senators at a closed-door luncheon in the Capitol that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all” on Gaza, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said.
A Republican senator asked Witkoff if Trump’s comments Tuesday night were made in the spur of the moment, and Witkoff replied that the administration had been “gestating on this plan for some time,” Hawley added.
Leavitt also said there was no written plan concerning Trump’s idea to take over Gaza before Tuesday night.
“The plan was written in the president’s remarks last night as he revealed it to the world,” she said.
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