On Monday night time President Donald Trump posted a nightmarish AI-generated video that depicted a Gaza rebuilt in his personal picture. NBC News tracked down the supply of the video, but it surely’s solely the tip of the iceberg. The “Trump Gaza” video is one piece of artwork that’s a part of a grotesque on-line meme motion depicting “Gaz-A-Lago,” a spot rife with namecoins, NFTS, and imagined futures.
Trump posted the AI-generated video—which exhibits bearded stomach dancers gyrating subsequent to Trump, Elon Musk consuming a pita, and a golden statue in the midst of a metropolis sq.—on February 25, 2025. According to NBC News, the video was initially posted on X on February 7, days after Trump pitched turning Gaza right into a resort neighborhood.
On February 4, Trump appeared with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pitched a weird and horrifying plan. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we’ll do a job with it,” Trump stated. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the thought of the United States proudly owning that piece of land, growing and creating 1000’s of jobs with one thing that can be magnificent in a very magnificent space that no person would know.”
It would, Trump stated, turn into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Online Trump followers took the picture of a Trump on line casino and resort constructed up within the ruins of Gaza and ran with it. A day after the press convention, a Grok-generated picture of Trump and Netanyahu sunning themselves on the “Gaza Riviera” appeared on X for the primary time. Two days later, a transferring model of that picture appeared within the AI-generated video that Trump would make go viral weeks later.
The supply of the video seems to be an X account known as “Nazi Hunters.” The account shares a mixture of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian content material. Some of it’s CCTV footage, a few of it’s commentary in regards to the struggle in Gaza and anti-semitism, and a few of it’s AI-generated memes and movies.
Looks just like the Gaz-A-Lago resort already dropped its first official tourism promo 😂 pic.twitter.com/ccQWZ8FLU7
— Nazi Hunters (@HuntersOfNazis) February 7, 2025
The video Trump shared is without doubt one of the first memetic visions of “Gaz-A-Lago” to interrupt into the mainstream web, however there’s a variety of it effervescent beneath the floor when you look. X is stuffed with AI-generated photos of sandy seashores and resort communities with a “Gaz-A-Lago” signal sitting subsequent to the water. One of essentially the most grotesque is a chicken’s eye view of a golf course surrounded by a distant metropolis. The phrases “All Eyes on Raffah” are spelled out on the inexperienced, a parody of a viral AI-generated picture from final yr.
Ok “Gaz-a-Lago” is one of the best one up to now. Kudos to Michael if it’s his unique. pic.twitter.com/IkFAEm6R71
— Strxwmxn 🤘 (@strxwmxn) February 5, 2025
And then there are the memecoins. Over on pump.enjoyable, a spot the place anybody can launch a cryptocurrency in a couple of minutes, there are too many “Gaz-A-Lago” cash to depend. Most of them solely have a market cap of some thousand {dollars}, however there are a couple of which have damaged by and grabbed up greater than $10 grand in worth. The hottest, with a market cap of $170,000 as of this writing, is “Gaz-A-Lago Official ($GAZA).
The memecoin has an internet site. It’s promising NFTs, merch, and a neighborhood. In traditional fly-by-night crypto vogue, its Telegram hyperlink goes nowhere, its Discord hyperlink is null, and its X account has been restricted. A notice on the backside of the positioning waves away the horror of what it’s doing.
“This mission is related to a meme token and goals to deliver levity to the continued battle in Gaza,” the positioning says. “We acknowledge the intense nature of the scenario and encourage constructive dialogue, empathy, and humanitarian assist.”
$GAZA desires to promote folks NFTs that think about a Gaza rebuilt in Donald Trump’s picture. The NFTs will function luxurious properties, unique vehicles, and enterprise property. Its imaginative and prescient is “to reimagine Gaza as a premier luxurious vacation spot by blockchain-driven crowdfunding and digital possession,” it says. If all goes properly, the plan is to leverage earnings from the memecoin and NFTs into “bodily infrastructure initiatives” that embody “partnerships with tourism and actual property builders.”
This is all, after all, a joke to its creator. It’s a memecoin, a rug-pull with an internet site on high of it to make it appear actual. But it’s bought a market cap approaching $200,000. Someone is making just a little cash right here. And the creator is promising to donate 2% of all $GAZA transactions to humanitarian help organizations. It says it helps UNICEF’s mission in Gaza.
It’s attainable, and even possible, that the pretensions to donate to humanitarian help are a joke too. That disclaimer looms on the backside of the web site. “This web site is only satirical and is meant for leisure and comedic functions solely,” it says.
Yet there’s a hyperlink that works on the web site. “Buy $GAZA Now” will take you to pump.enjoyable the place you may spend actual cash on the satire constructed on human struggling and Trump’s delusional dream for the way forward for a devastated Gaza.
