Featured Image Credit: Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images
Topics: World News, News, Politics, Donald Trump, US News
Rhianna Benson
Topics: World News, News, Politics, Donald Trump, US News
Donald Trump has been brutally humbled this week, after critics of his bizarre new 'Board of Peace' pointed out that he's already banned half of its members from entering the States.
For those out of the loop, the Republican unveiled his new political alliance at the World Economic Forum last Thursday (22 Jan), in Davos, Switzerland, promoting it as something of an alternative to the United Nations.
The idea was contrived in light of Trump's supposed success in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas back in October.
"The board of peace is composed of the top leaders in the world, actually," he claimed last week. "Last October, we released a plan for the permanent end to the conflict in Gaza - and I’m pleased to say that our vision was unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council."
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Amongst Trump's numerous plans for the body is allegedly to rebuild the entire annihilated Palestinian territory of Gaza from scratch.
During Thursday's get-together, he and son-in-law Jared Kushner debuted AI-generated snaps that showed hundreds of skyscrapers to be strewn along the Mediterranean coast, as well a cluster of housing estates scattered across Rafah, which his new Board of Peace will supposedly take the lead on.
Prior to claiming the group 'has the chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created' Trump, 79, had invited numerous countries to join his new party, which was met with many rejections.
Only a handful of nations went on to accept the American's invite, and were welcomed to the stage by Trump last week, described as the right-wing leader's close 'friends'.
This included leaders from Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
Russia's leader Vladimir Putin is also understood to have accepted an invite.
It has since emerged, however, that in the case of over half of these nations, their own politicians wouldn't even be allowed to enter the States to converse with new 'pal' Trump, with the country as a whole having been banned.
This is true in the cases of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan.
Trump's administration announced earlier this month that consular offices would no longer approve official documentation from these countries.
His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio accused citizens from these 18 nations - as well as 57 others - of 'extracting wealth from the American people' and ruled that citizens seeking nonimmigrant visas to visit or reside temporarily in the US will now be barred from doing so.
"President Trump has made clear that immigrants must be financially self-sufficient and not be a financial burden to Americans," a subsequent State Department statement continued.
"The Department of State is undergoing a full review of all policies, regulations, and guidance to ensure that immigrants from these high-risk countries do not utilise welfare in the United States or become a public charge."
Unsurprisingly, this realisation has gone down a treat with critics of Trump's latest plan, with one X user joking: "This gets more comical the longer it goes."
Another teased: "This is just borderline satire. He’s ostensibly trying to extract one billion dollars from each of them in order to resume processing of their immigrant visas. Holy f**king s**t."
Amongst those to have publicly turned down Trump's Board of Peace membership, are France, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, all of whom were told they'd have to cough up $1bn to join.