Former U.S. President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, speaks during a September 25, 2024 campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned,” said the National Iranian American Council.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat on Wednesday to blow Iran “to smithereens” if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as “genocidal.”
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” he said to raucous applause. “We’re gonna blow it to smithereens, you can’t do that. And there would be no more threats.”
Responding to the former president’s remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that “Trump’s threat to blow Iran’s largest cities and the country itself ‘to smithereens’ is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal.”
Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself "to smithereens" is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal.https://t.co/8LImpJLefl
“Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran’s most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government,” NIAC continued. “These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat.”
“Likewise, we unequivocally condemn any Iranian threats that may be targeted at Trump or former officials,” the group added. “Political violence must be rejected and prevented in all forms. Assassinations are a path to war and human suffering, as was demonstrated by the strike on [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen.] Qasem Soleimani that engendered these threats, and risk further embroiling the region in violence.”
Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran’s economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to “bomb the shit out of” Islamic State fighters and “take out their families,” resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
“He’s a liar. C’mon, you know he doesn’t tell the truth at all,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the only member of either legislative chamber who voted against authorizing the so-called War on Terror in 2001—said in a recent interview with The Nation.
“Just look at his record, who he cozies up to in terms of dictators,” Lee added. “He wants more investment in the military budget. What his strategy is, is to create a more dangerous world.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro greets the president of the country’s Supreme Court of Justice, Caryslia Rodríguez, in Caracas on July 31, 2024. (Photo: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images)
Venezuela’s foreign ministry hit back at the U.S. State Department, accusing it of spearheading a “coup attempt.”
The U.S. State Department has formally recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the winner of Venezuela’s election as the nation’s highest legal body began an investigation of the vote at the request of President Nicolás Maduro, who says he prevailed in the contest that is now under intense global scrutiny.
In a statement released days after Venezuela’s election authority, Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), declared Maduro the winner with just over 51% of the vote, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed late Thursday that “it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.”
“Now is the time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful, peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people,” said Blinken, the top diplomat of a country that has repeatedly attempted to overthrow the Maduro government and hammered the country’s economy with sanctions. “We fully support the process of reestablishing democratic norms in Venezuela and stand ready to consider ways to bolster it jointly with our international partners.”
Venezuela’s Foreign Affairs Ministry quickly hit back, saying Friday that it “rejects the serious and ridiculous statements attributed to United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in which he pretends to assume the role of the Venezuelan electoral authorities, demonstrating that the U.S. government is leading the coup attempt against Venezuela, promoting a violent agenda against the Venezuelan people and their institutions.”
Blinken’s statement accepting the right-wing opposition’s claim of a decisive victory came a day after Maduro asked Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice on Wednesday to audit the presidential contest in the face of vocal concerns from regional leaders, election observers, and leading human rights organizations.
In a joint statement issued Thursday, the presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico said they are “closely following” the vote-counting process and called on the CNE to “move forward expeditiously and publicly release the data broken down by voting station”—something the Maduro government indicated it will do but has yet to provide.
Meanwhile, the Carter Center—an organization whose founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, once praised Venezuela’s election system as “the best in the world”—argued that the 2024 contest “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.”
“In the limited number of polling centers they visited, Carter Center observer teams noted the desire of the Venezuelan people to participate in a democratic election process, as demonstrated through their active participation as polling staff, party witnesses, and citizen observers,” the group said in a statement earlier this week. “However, their efforts were undermined by the CNE’s complete lack of transparency in announcing the results.”
The Carter Center also preemptively raised doubts about the legitimacy of the Venezuelan high court’s assessment of the election.
“You have another government institution, which is appointed by the government, to verify the government numbers for the election results, which are in question,” Jennie Lincoln, who led the Carter Center’s election delegation to Venezuela, told The Associated Press. “This is not an independent assessment.”
The tense and high-stakes dispute over the rightful winner of Venezuela’s election has set off violence in the streets of the nation’s capital and sparked fierce debate over the path forward for the Latin American nation’s government.
Some on the progressive left, both in Venezuela and internationally, view the right-wing opposition’s claims to victory as yet another in a long line of attacks on Venezuelan democracy by pro-corporate and fascist forces, while others—including left-wing regional leaders such as Chilean President Gabriel Boric—have expressed deep suspicions about the legitimacy of the contest, particularly given the CNE’s lack of transparency surrounding the vote count. CNE has attributed the delayed rollout of full results to a cyberattack.
“The international community, and especially the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the election records and the process, and that international observers not affiliated with the government report on the accuracy of the results,” Boric wrote on social media. “From Chile, we will not recognize any result that is not verifiable.”
Venezuela’s opposition, led by María Corina Machado, continues to insist it won Sunday’s election, producing its own website purporting to demonstrate that González defeated Maduro with 67% of the vote.
On Thursday, Machado—who was barred from participating in the presidential contest—took to the pages of the U.S. business press to proclaim that she can “prove Maduro got trounced.”
“Maduro didn’t win the Venezuelan presidential election on Sunday. He lost in a landslide to Edmundo González, 67% to 30%,” Machado wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “I know this to be true because I can prove it. I have receipts obtained directly from more than 80% of the nation’s polling stations.”
Maduro has pledged to release the full election results in the coming days and blamed Machado and the U.S. for stoking unrest and violence.
“If the U.S. government is willing to respect sovereignty and stop threatening Venezuela, we can return to dialogue,” Maduro wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
Israeli soldiers and police clash with a far-right mob that invaded the Beit Lid army base in Kfar Yona on July 29, 2024. (Photo: Oren Ziv/AFP via Getty Images)
Several Israeli lawmakers and one minister took part in the attempt to free the nine reservists, who were hailed as heroes by multiple Cabinet members.
Far-right Israelis including government officials stormed two military bases late on Monday, sparking clashes with troops and police over the arrest of Israel Defense Forces reservists who allegedly gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner.
Hundreds of protesters broke into the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert in an attempt to stop the detention of nine reserve troops accused of sodomizing a Palestinian jailed there. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the victim is hospitalized with severe injuries and is unable to walk.
The nine suspects were then taken to the Beit Lid army base, which was also mobbed by at least dozens of demonstrators.
Supporters of president-elect Nicolas Maduro celebrate his proclamation as president-elect in the vicinity of the CNE headquarters during the ceremony to deliver the majority of the vote Certificate at CNE Headquarters on July 29, 2024 in Caracas, Venezuela. (Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images)
Shortly before midnight on 28 July, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that — with 80 percent of the over 20 million votes counted — the trend was irreversible: Nicolás Maduro had been re-elected president of Venezuela.
According to the CNE, Maduro received 51.2 percent of the vote, while his primary opponent, the little-known Edmundo Gonzales, received 44.02 percent. With that result, it was clear that the Venezuelan majority chose to continue the project of Bolivarian socialism introduced by Hugo Chavez at the end of the nineties. Recognizing the economic turn-around of the last two years and proud of their achievements in building 5.1 million housing units, securing food sovereignty, and deepening communal democracy, Venezuelans re-elected Maduro for a third six-year term.
A former ambassador to Argentina, the opposition candidate Gonzales replaced far-right leader Maria Corina Machado as the candidate of the Unity Platform after Machado was disqualified from running. Machado has long been an outspoken critic of Chavismo, supporting US sanctions and advocating foreign intervention in the country. In 2018, she asked Benjamin Netanyahu for military assistance in dismantling the Maduro government. Machado has close ties in the United States. In 2009, she was a Yale World Fellow. On June 23, 2024 she spoke at a National Endowment for Democracy awards ceremony in Washington, DC. She has been nicknamed the new “iron lady” after her idol Margaret Thatcher. In contrast, Maduro supports the Palestinian liberation struggle, linking it to the struggle of the indigenous peoples of Venezuela against colonial genocide.
Venezuela’s far-right opposition is doubling down on its refusal to accept defeat in the country’s presidential election amid simmering unrest and violence in the streets of Caracas, sparking warnings of another coup attempt in a nation that has long faced interference from the United States and other Western powers.
Led by María Corina Machado, who was disqualified from running in Sunday’s election, Venezuela’s opposition claimed that its candidate—ex-diplomat Edmundo González—defeated President Nicolás Maduro with over 70% of the vote, contradicting the official results announced by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE).
Machado, who once urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back an effort to topple Maduro’s elected government, pointed Venezuelans to a website the opposition is using to assemble its own vote counts.
“So far, she hasn’t presented any evidence [of fraud],” Caracas-based reporter Andreína Chávez Alava said in an appearance on Democracy Now! Tuesday morning. “In past elections they have also said they have evidence that they won and they never actually showed any proof.”
Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) arrives to speak during a rally with running mate U.S. Republican Presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The former Republican president, despite all his allegedly populist rhetoric, has a deeply anti-worker record from his first term. Vance’s record is no different and he’s no better.
“These attempts to create the appearance of distance between Trump and Project 2025 are happening because Americans are starting to learn about this extreme takeover plan,” said one Democratic congressman.
At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration—including six former Cabinet secretaries—have been involved with Project 2025, according to a CNN analysis published earlier this month. Among them is the outgoing director, Paul Dans.
“Dans served in the Trump administration as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management where he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than 2 million federal workers,” according to his profile on the Heritage website.
Elon Musk responded on X that ‘parody is legal in America’. Photograph: Chesnot/Getty Images
Doctored campaign video featuring US vice-president reposted by Tesla chief executive watched 128m times
Kamala Harris’s election campaign has accused Elon Musk of spreading “manipulated lies” after the Tesla chief executive posted a doctored video featuring the vice-president on his X account.
Musk reposted a manipulated Harris campaign video on Friday evening in which a fake Harris voiceover says: “I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire,” and that anyone who criticises her is “both sexist and racist”.
Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator, accused Musk of violating the platform’s guidelines. According to X’s synthetic and manipulated media policy, users are barred from sharing “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm” although allowances are made for satire provided it does not “cause significant confusion about the authenticity of the media”.
A spokesperson for Harris’s presidential campaign said: “The American people want the real freedom, opportunity and security Vice-President Harris is offering; not the fake, manipulated lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.”
The Conservative candidate has changed his tune on climate action, recently attacking Labour’s net zero policies and arguing for new fossil fuel extraction.
Former Conservative minister Robert Jenrick, who has today entered the race to lead the Tory party, has a growing record of attacks on climate action.
The MP for Newark – who saw a 23.9 percent swing against him in the general election, and served as secretary of state for immigration under former prime minister Rishi Sunak – has attacked what he calls “net zero zealotry”, and has labelled the UK’s net zero target “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”.
This is despite Jenrick having hailed the UK’s “world-leading commitment to net zero by 2050” as recently as 2020.
Jenrick has also called for the building of “new gas power stations” and supports new fossil fuel extraction, including North Sea oil and gas, and the opening of new coal mines.
His candidacy follows the Conservative Party losing a landslide election on 4 July against a Labour Party committed to climate action, during which the Tories supported new North Sea oil and gas extraction, and the delaying of key climate reforms.
Almost half of voters (49 percent) believe renewable energy would lower household bills, while only 14 percent say the same for more fossil fuels, according to polling by More in Common.
This week saw what climate scientists believe could be the hottest day on record thanks to climate change. The world’s leading climate science group, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said that there is “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.
Attacks on Labour’s Climate Agenda
In his response to the announcement of Labour’s legislative agenda in the King’s Speech last week (19 July), Jenrick used an address in the House of Commons to launch an attack on the government’s climate policies, spreading familiar misinformation.
Jenrick said that “despite being only responsible for one percent of global emissions, we find ourselves with a government pursuing for ideological reasons a net zero policy which is going to make it harder for our own consumers to afford their bills, [and] which is further going to erode our industrial base”.
Downplaying a country’s emissions is a “widely deployed” tactic used to delay international climate action, according to academics. Contrary to Jenrick’s claims, the UK’s cost of living crisis has been made worse by its dependence on fossil fuels, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
And rather than “eroding our industrial base”, net zero policies are already creating new jobs and economic development. The UK’s net zero economy grew nine percent in 2023 to £74 billion – equivalent to 3.8 percent of the total UK economy, and supported more than 765,000 jobs, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Jenrick also attacked Labour’s green investment vehicle, Great British Energy – launched today – as a quango “which serves no apparent purpose”, warned that new solar farms would “despoil our countryside”, and claimed that “200,000 jobs in the oil and gas sector have been put in danger”, using a widely debunked figure.
The chief advisor to the National Farmers Union (NFU) has said solar farms “do not in any way present a risk to the UK’s food security”, while NFU president Tom Bradshaw has attacked the claims made by Jenrick and others as “sensationalist”.
On 11 July, when Labour announced its decision not to defend the new proposed coal mine in Cumbria in the High Court, Jenrick posted on X: “First the oil and gas industry, now coking coal for the steel industry. Less than a week in and jobs and economic growth are already being sacrificed on the altar of Labour’s net zero zealotry.”
In 2021, Jenrick decided not to challenge the planning application for the new mine – the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years, which would extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year, emitting an estimated 220 millions tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime.
Net Zero U-Turn
Jenrick’s attacks on Labour’s green policies mirror his growing criticism of climate action – despite having previously celebrated the Conservatives Party’s support for net zero.
In February, Jenrick wrote an article for The Telegraph – a newspaper that regularly publishes attacks on climate science and net zero reforms – claiming that voters are sick of the “dishonesty” from politicians about “what net zero entails”.
He said that the UK’s 2050 net zero ambition was decided upon in the summer of 2019, “while the country was occupied by Brexit debates”, and was “nodded through the Commons with fewer than 90 minutes of debate”.
At the time, Jenrick, who was Treasury minister, welcomed the adoption of the target. In 2020, while serving as communities secretary under Boris Johnson, Jenrick praised the UK’s “world-leading commitment to net zero by 2050”. Ahead of the 2019 general election, he said that voters should support the Conservatives on the basis that the UK was the “first advanced economy in the world to pass a net zero target”.
Yet, in the February 2024 Telegraph article, Jenrick wrote that it was obvious to him “at the time” that the costs associated with net zero “were likely to be astronomical.” The article went on to claim that “reaching net zero by 2050 requires us to overhaul the material foundations of our economy in just three decades”, and that the result “is a dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality and that lacks the buy-in of the public”.
Climate Denial Links
Jenrick’s campaign for Tory leader is being run by fellow Conservative MP Danny Kruger.
Kruger is the chair of the New Conservatives faction in Parliament – a group that advocates for more socially conservative, right-wing ideas within the Tory party, campaigning against “woke” culture, and immigration.
It also appears that New Conservative press officer Sam Armstrong is serving as one of Jenrick’s campaign aides, although Armstrong neither confirmed nor denied his role when approached for comment.
As DeSmog has revealed, the New Conservatives received £50,000 in December from the Legatum Institute, a free market think tank that formerly employed Kruger as a senior fellow.
In May of this year, Jenrick gave a speech to the Legatum Institute’s ‘Free Market Roadshow’ event at the group’s London office, where he called for new fossil fuel plants. He said: “We are smothering our ability to build new nuclear power stations, to build new gas power stations, which we’ve got to have to have the base capacity that we need as a country, in this mesh of regulation.”
The Legatum Institute’s parent company is UAE-based investment firm Legatum Group, which co-owns the right-wing broadcaster GB News. The outlet frequently spreads climate denial, both via its presenters and guests.
Kruger is also on the advisory board of another Legatum project, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), alongside some of the world’s most high-profile climate science deniers.
Jenrick has pledged to win back voters who have switched from the Tories to Reform UK, the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage, which is bankrolled by climate deniers and polluting interests, and campaigns to “scrap all of net zero”.
Polling from the Conservative Environment Network, a green caucus backed by dozens of Tory MPs, found that only two percent of voters who planned to switch from the Conservative to Reform saw climate change as the most important issue for them in July’s election.
