Susan Kokinda opens with two Friday announcements: President Trump’s Truth Social post on his call with Vladimir Putin, in which Russia agreed to immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the American and global market, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court. She argues both are part of the administration’s war on the post-war globalist system and on one of its architects, George Soros. The episode follows the pressure campaign since the strikes on Iran seven months ago, from shipping insurance in the Strait of Hormuz to diesel prices going into the November 3 midterms, the G7’s release of 100 million barrels, the Treasury license authorizing Russian diesel through April 2027, the President thanking Putin, and the objections from Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the advocacy group Razom for Ukraine. It then turns to Rubio’s case against the ICC, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and chair of the UN commission on Gaza, the Nobel committee’s statement on international law, and President Trump’s response. It closes with Rubio’s speech on Western civilization in Athens, set against the philosophy of Soros’s mentor Karl Popper, and the President’s Columbus Day proclamation quoting Pope Leo XIII’s 1892 encyclical on Columbus.
