Monday Brief: The Red-Green Alliance Burning France

Susan Kokinda opens with Chatham House's October 15 warning that President Trump could come out of the midterms "unshackled from electoral constraints," and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's answer in Mumbai: "we're no longer going to be defensive." The episode looks at the author of that warning, Dr. Andrew Payne, and his book War on the Ballot, at Halford Mackinder's doctrine, and at Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox on the members of Congress who have come to Chatham House in the run-up to their own elections, with Secretary Rubio on America First. It then turns to the reaction to the President's diesel deal with Russia and his openness to a meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Wall Street Journal's "Yalta 2" editorial, with President Trump and Secretary Rubio on talks about nuclear weapons, and the ASEAN, APEC and G20 summits ahead. It closes with what the President is doing without the Congress: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the tariff authorities, the EPA's repeal of the 2024 power-plant rules, Defense Production Act funding for refining, federal loans for power, drug and manufacturing plants, the White House's $11.3 trillion investment count, and 21 new plant sites announced since October 1.

Join us for a live broadcast, with your hosts Barbara Boyd, Susan Kokinda and Adam Sturman. Thursday October 22nd at 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific every Thursday. We take your questions from both the Youtube live chat and our Newsletter Subscribers!

Download Barbara briefing, The Real Revolution: The British and the Communists Are Trying to Kill Again, at https://prom.ac/realrev. Barbara Boyd opens with Senator Elissa Slotkin's remarks to University of Chicago students on October 13 about deterring young people from working for the Trump administration, and her background in the intelligence community, the National Security Council and the Pentagon. The episode follows the files Data Republican has been releasing on X about networks of former national security and USAID officials, including the United Democracy Alliance, National Security Leaders for America, Renew to Thrive and the Horizons Project, and their plans around the midterms, and the Washington Post's October 20 report that current and former officials with Defense Department experience have been advising officials from 10 states. It then looks back at the Transition Integrity Project's war games of June 2020, Susan Rice's warning to corporations, Lord Palmerston and Giuseppe Mazzini, and Vice President JD Vance on the charge that the President is profiting from his office. It closes with the Justice Department's election-crime prosecutions, including 28 people charged in California, the end of USAID, Mike Benz at the Institute of Peace, and making the November 3 midterms too big to rig.

Susan Kokinda opens with the more than $1.2 billion in penalties Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's Treasury imposed on Bank of America on October 13 for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, among the largest in Treasury history, after FinCEN found the bank failed to report priority national security risks, including Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border. The episode traces the bank's record from Countrywide, Merrill Lynch and its $45 billion TARP bailout back to the petrodollar loans of the 1970s, the 1980s debt crisis and IMF austerity in Latin America, and Tom Clausen's moves from Bank of America to the World Bank and back. It then turns to Bank of America's chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan, chair of the Sustainable Markets Initiative founded by King Charles and of the World Economic Forum's International Business Council, and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance launched in April 2021. It closes with Secretary Bessent's statement to the IMF. World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok on growth, exchange rates and energy, including an initial U.S. contribution to the Nuclear Energy Assistance Trust Fund, and the gap in nuclear power between the OECD and the developing world.

Barbara Boyd opens with President Trump's remarks to reporters on Friday, before his Georgia rally, about Ukraine's President Zelensky: he knows the details of how the war began, and at some point he will release them. She argues that the real story of the war's origins threatens what remains of Washington's Deep State, and is driving Europe and Canada into acts of state suicide to keep the war going. The episode follows the President's push to bring down diesel prices ahead of the November 3 midterms, from the threatened U.S. export ban and the emergency diesel stocks of France and Germany to the Treasury license for Russian diesel, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on America First. It covers the peace plan Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff discussed with Ukrainian and European officials in Florida, as reported by David Ignatius, the restriction of Starshield, and the President's Newsmax interview. It then turns to the European and Canadian response: Anne Applebaum on the Ukrainian army, the EU summit in Brussels and Ukraine's €70 billion financing gap, Ukraine's shortage of Patriot interceptors, the IMF's growth forecasts for Europe, the polls in France and Germany, and Mark Carney's 100-Year Partnership Declaration with Ukraine. It closes with President Trump's 2016 ABC interview on Russia and Crimea, Scott Horton's book Provoked, and what is at stake on November 3.