The Man Who Built Nothing
by Francesco Vitali
When Donald Trump landed in Jerusalem on Monday morning, the air already carried the choreography of a victory rehearsed elsewhere. The hostages were on their way home. The cameras were in place. The word “peace” had been polished like an old trophy pulled from the attic of diplomacy.
And in the midst of it all — before the dust of Gaza had even begun to settle — Trump declared “the end of the war” and “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
Applause in the Knesset rose like a cue on a stage. For a brief moment, it almost worked. History — or at least its spectacle — seemed to belong to him again.
But the truth was simpler, and far less cinematic. The agreement he took credit for had been negotiated for weeks by American, Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish diplomats. Trump merely arrived for the ribbon-cutting and declared the building his own.
It was a familiar script — an architectural illusion he has perfected over decades. Like the towers that bear his name but not his steel, the casinos that collapsed while he collected licensing fees, the universities that sold the idea of success without the labor of learning — this peace too was branded, not built.
Inside Parliament, he drifted from his text like a man lost in his own echo. He thanked God, praised Netanyahu, mocked Biden, spoke of Iran, and urged Israel’s president to “pardon” the prime minister mid-trial — a gesture that made even seasoned diplomats flinch. He spoke as if unveiling a new hotel chain in the desert of history: “The historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
Outside, in Ramallah, Palestinian prisoners stepped off white Red Cross buses into cheering crowds. In Tel Aviv, families embraced loved ones after two years in captivity.
In Gaza, men searched through rubble for pieces of their homes.
The war, in truth, was still alive — paused, perhaps, but breathing.
The New York Times, in its restrained cadence, called it a “cease-fire.”
Trump called it “the end of an age of terror and death.”
Between those two lines lives the Trump doctrine: the triumph of declaration over detail.
He has always understood the world’s craving for closure. People no longer seek solutions — they seek someone who will declare one.
And he gives exactly that: the outline of victory, the choreography of achievement, the sentence that fits a headline. He offers the comfort of an ending without the labor of reaching it.
In Sharm el-Sheikh, beneath banners reading “Welcome to the Land of Peace,” the so-called peace summit lasted less than two hours. Leaders smiled, spoke of hope, and left the harder parts — disarmament, reconstruction, governance — behind, like unpaid contractors after an opening ceremony.
Trump, meanwhile, boarded Air Force One, slogans trailing behind him like confetti. “We brought peace,” he said. “The war is over.” The applause followed him to the runway.
As always, what he leaves behind is the skeleton of someone else’s work — half-built, painted gold, renamed. Diplomats will spend months cleaning up the fragments: clauses, corpses, aid trucks, missing names. He will spend those same months repeating the only part that matters to him: that he ended a war.
The genius — and the tragedy — of Donald Trump is that he understands how the architecture of perception has replaced the architecture of reality.
In a world where power is measured not by accomplishment but by narrative control, he is the master builder of façades.
He does not build peace — he builds the image of peace.
He does not end wars — he merely announces their endings.
He does not construct towers — he leases the illusion of height.
And the world, weary of chaos, looks up and mistakes the sign for the skyline.
Because in truth, there was no peace to bring — only a pause to sell.
The cease-fire was fragile, the dead still unburied, the terms unfinished.
Yet Trump declared victory — as he always does — mistaking the sound of applause for the sound of history.
The world saw a handshake; he saw a headline.
Perhaps, in the end, he built nothing — except himself.
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