Last night Donald Trump proudly tweeted the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a new town named in Trump's honor in the Golan Heights. "Trump Heights" features an enormous gold-trimmed sign on a lush green strip of artificial turf.
There's a bit of a catch, however. The town does not exist. No location has been selected for building the town. No funding for construction has been allocated, and even stating the town will probably be built "someday" is likely stretching things. Talking Points Memo reports, “The head of the Golan caucus in the Israeli Knesset, Zvi Hauser went even further: ‘Anyone who reads the fine print of the ‘historic’ decision understands that this is a conceptual decision. There is no funding. There is no planning. There is no location and there is really no committed decision.’”
In other words, the Enormous Gold-Trimmed Sign is the sole component of the Israeli Prime Minister's birthday gift to Trump, and even it has no actual plot of land it can be planted on. It's likely headed for warehouse storage. It will be up to the next government to either make good on Netanyahu's pledge or, more likely, auction off the sign for use as miniature golf course prop.
None of this is likely to bother Trump. Within three weeks you can expect him to have commissioned a new plaque identifying the fictional Israeli town of Trump Heights as the location of one of the most bloody battles in the American Civil War. So many good men on both sides lost their lives that day. At this location. Wherever it is.