Donald Trump is the “Great Obfuscator.”

When asked to clarify his outrageous claims he muddies the political waters even more in an attempt to be all things to all people.

Last Friday he told the Christian political pressure group Turning Point Action that if they voted for him in November they wouldn’t have to vote again. He would “fix it.”

Liberals immediately raised the anti-democracy hue and cry. Donald Trump, they said, planned to either abolish elections or rig the system so that conservative Republicans would stay in power forever.

No, no, no, say the MAGA people. That is not what he meant at all. He meant that they won’t have to vote for Donald Trump again because he is prohibited by the constitution from running for a third term.

It was left to Fox News—Trump’s chosen television medium—to clarify the muddle. Interviewer Laura Ingraham pressed him to explain. Trump said the statement was made to encourage Christians to vote in November because American conservatives don’t often vote. He added that the same could be said for gun owners.

This was patently false. As a group, America’s Christians and gun owners are among the largest proportion of voters in the US. His clarification made no sense. So what did the Great Obfuscator mean?

Just as confusing…

…is Trump’s position on the much-discussed Project 2025.

For the benefit of those who have been trapped in a sealed cave for the past six months, Project 2025, is a 900-page report compiled by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. It sets out in great detail a programme for Donald Trump if he is inaugurated president in 2025.

Among its provisions are proposals to gut the FBI and Department of Justice and replace tens of thousands of federal civil servants with loyal MAGA Republicans. It wants a national ban on abortion and restrictions on contraception and IVF treatments. Project 2025 proposes a strong “unitary executive branch;” an “end to civil rights protections” and no more “safeguards on drinking water.” All efforts to combat climate change would end” and America would focus more on drilling for fossil fuels. The Department of Education would be scrapped along with all economic ties to China.

Democrats immediately denounced Project 2025 as anti-constitutional, anti-Democratic, anti-American and verging on the illegal. And they added that all those antis pretty well summed up Trump himself.

A fair amount of the mud stuck and Trump quickly started to distance himself from Project 2025. This proved difficult because one of the main contributors to the report was his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The Director of the Heritage Foundation, and the main impetus behind the report, Paul Dans, was Trump’s Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management.

This week Mr Dans resigned as Director of the Heritage Foundation and claimed that Project 2025 was not meant to be an action plan for Donald Trump. Instead, he said, it was merely some thoughts for any future conservative administration.

The Trump campaign immediately put out an “I told you so” release. But then we need to look at what Trump has personally promised to do: Gut the Department of Justice and the FBI and put on trial for treason the “Biden Crime family” and political opponents such as Liz Cheney. “Drill, drill, drill for oil.” Raise tariffs on Chinese exports for between 65-100 percent. Pardon most of the Capitol Hill rioters. Round-up and deport up to 15 million illegal immigrants and “fix it so you won’t have to vote for me again.”

What next in the Middle East?

If Israel was genuinely committed to Gaza peace negotiations, one would have thought it would have refrained from assassinating Hamas’s chief negotiator.

It appears they are not, for Ismail Haniyeh was blown up in a rocket attack while visiting Tehran for the inauguration of the new president.

Mind you, the Israelis refused to take credit for the assassination which most people believe was in retaliation for a Hezbollah attack which killed 12 Arab children who were playing football in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. That attack was immediately followed by a targeted Israeli attack on Beirut which killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. The Israelis did claim responsibility for that assassination which they said was in retaliation for the death of the 12 children.

In the Byzantine world of Middle East politics it is often difficult to tell who is responsible for what. Or, more likely, which faction is responsible. But what is clear is that the tit for tat attacks “don’t help,” as President Biden said this week.

At the end of May, President Biden unveiled what he said was an Israeli peace plan. But then Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of a Joint Session of Congress and vowed to completely destroy Hamas and demilitarise and deradicalise the Gaza Strip. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh was a logical extension of that speech which in turn has been the thrust of Netanyahu’s policies since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

In the meantime, Iran has threatened to retaliate against Israel, although it has not specified what form that retaliation could take.

President Biden, for his part, is clearly frustrated by his failure to rein in either the rhetoric or actions of Netanyahu. But the US is committed to the defence of the state of Israel and on Thursday Biden phoned Netanyahu to tell him that the US would protect Israel from an attack by Iran.

It is just as likely that the retaliation will come in the form of increased attacks by Hezbollah—Iran’s chief proxy in Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah is the world’s largest non-state military power and its low-level war with Israel has forced the evacuation of about 100,000 Israelis from northern Israel. Either way, it looks, as a Fatah spokesperson said, “the door to Hell is opening.”

Venezuelan election cheating

It’s more or less official—Nicolas Maduro cheated in last Sunday’s presidential elections in Venezuela. But there’s more, the opposition can prove it.

The presidential elections employed a combined electronic and hand-counted paper tallies system of voting in an effort to insure that the elections were cheat-proof.

They worked like this: voters punched a button on a voting machine next to their preferred candidate. The voting machine then produced a ballot receipt which was deposited in the sealed ballot box.

When the polls closed the paper receipts were counted by hand and then compared to the electronic record on the machines. If they tallied they were sent under armed guard to the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Caracas who announced the results.

The counting of the paper ballots and their comparison to the electronic record was open to any member of the public at the local polling areas.

With 80 percent of the vote counted, the CNE announced that Maduro had won with 51.2 per cent of the vote compared to 44.2 percent for the lead opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.

But the opposition had—as they were allowed to—been conducting their own count which showed that Gonzalez had a landslide victory with 67 percent of the vote. Demonstrators took to the street. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and more than 1,000 people in Caracas alone were arrested.

So what went wrong? How did Maduro appear to win? Simple. Three of the five members of the National Electoral Council were personally appointed by Maduro. The council president was Maduro’s legal counsel.

The US, EU, UK, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and a host of other countries and international organisations have declared the elections a fraud. But Maduro is non-plussed. He has said he will present the voting records to the country’s Supreme Court (aka Supreme Tribunal of Justice or TSJ) for a legal audit.

There are two problems with this: The audit would be conducted behind closed doors and the judges have been appointed by Maduro.

The Carter Centre was engaged by the Venezuelan government to oversee the elections. It said that the TSJ “is another government institution, appointed by the government to verify the government numbers for the election results which are in question. This is not an independent assessment.”

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”