Call of the day

9.00am (DC Time)

That’s when President Trump is due to speak with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping today (Friday), before announcing a possible deal to bring TikTok’s US operations under US ownership.

Temperature rising

We didn’t build Intrigue to weigh in on the kinds of issues now dividing America, but the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has reverberated all around the world.

So you can bet most of the ~180 embassies in DC will have written home about Kirk’s murder, trying to untangle what it all means. Here’s a quick tour down Embassy Row: 

• 🇮🇱 Israel 

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was among the first leaders to mourn Kirk’s shooting, describing the 31-year-old as a “lion-hearted friend of Israel”. Why?

Kirk defended Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks, rejected antisemitism as evil, and staunchly backed the US-Israel alliance. Like many (though not all) American church-goers, he also saw a link between modern Israel and his faith.

But initial MAGA unity around his death is now also partly unravelling over Israel, with some claiming Kirk was privately a little more critical of Jewish people and the Jewish state than he let on publicly (the internet has resurfaced quotes along these lines). Either way, it all hints at a deeper split between the more isolationist parts of Trump’s base, and those feeling bound to Israel over religious and/or democratic affinity.

And we wouldn’t ordinarily brief you on conspiracy theories, but some voices emerging out of this split have now made enough noise for Netanyahu himself to weigh in and reject the idea Israel was somehow involved in Kirk’s death as “monstrous” and “insane”.

Anyway, for Israel, it all reflects two big problems: first, with a vanishingly small minority of young Americans (18-34) still supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza, it’s now lost a key ally within Trump’s young conservative base. And second, it’s all laid bare that even within Trump’s base, there are now divisions over continued US support.

But while Kirk pushed back on any isolationist instincts towards Israel, he embraced that philosophy a little more when it came to…

• 🇺🇦 Ukraine 

Kirk was widely known among several US allies in Europe over his scepticism around US support for Ukraine’s self-defence — this ranged from characterising Putin’s war as a distant border dispute, and Zelensky as a CIA puppet, through to flagging the risks of the US becoming embroiled in another ‘forever war’, if not a full nuclear conflict.

So while most of Trump’s party (and the American public) now want to see more US support for Ukraine’s self-defence against Putin’s aggression, Kirk often stood out as one of the more influential proponents of the opposite view.

The risk for Ukraine has now been in Putin’s predictable efforts to somehow tie Kyiv to Kirk’s shooting (indeed, Russian propaganda just rolled out a fugitive pro-Moscow Ukrainian MP to make that exact claim).

And speaking of propaganda…

• 🇷🇺 Russia, 🇨🇳 China, 🇮🇷 Iran 

Accounts linked to Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran have been in overdrive since Kirk’s assassination, though each with a slightly different angle:

• Putin’s Russia Today tweeted about Kirk’s murder 39 times in 24 hours, not just trying to blame Ukraine, but also amplifying incendiary stuff in hopes of further inflaming US divisions. That’s because Russian propaganda is often less about getting the West to believe something, and more about it believing nothing — because when you believe nothing, you do nothing.

• Iran’s propagandists have also been pushing the above Israel conspiracy theories, in hopes of eroding US support for the regime’s arch rival. And…

• Beijing has been at it too. But (unlike Moscow or Tehran), for China it’s less about trying to pin Kirk’s assassination on an enemy, and more about framing the US itself as a source of chaos and extremism. This suits the ruling Communist Party, both as a way to cast the US as an unreliable ally for anyone else abroad, but also to draw a neat contrast to its own claims of legitimacy via order back home.

But at the end of the day, these and other foreign powers are often just fanning the flames of a wildfire already roaring across the US.

Intrigue’s Take

Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, Trump, and Biden.

Know something these US presidents all have in common? They’ve all at one point or another — in one way or another — said the same thing that occasionally gets uttered on-stage at stuffy think-tank panel discussions to wake the audience up.

Ultimately, they argue, the greatest threat to America comes not from abroad, but from within.

Sure, these presidents have made their comments in different centuries and with different intent. You might even ascribe blame to some of them.

But the basic point holds true to us, and DC embassies (whether friend or foe) will all now be assessing to what extent Kirk’s campus assassination reflects a deeper cancer of polarisation and political violence within the US — the last year alone has also included two assassination attempts on President Trump, the torching of the Pennsylvania governor’s house, and two Minnesota lawmakers shot (one fatally) at their homes.

For foes, a divided, distracted and distrustful America is a weaker America, less willing or able to throw its weight abroad, whether to deter Xi from taking Taiwan, Putin from taking Ukraine, or the Ayatollahs from getting nukes. It’s also arguably an America with less credibility to weigh in amid political violence or the stifling of free speech elsewhere.

As for allies, that same divided, distracted, and distrustful America hints at a power that’s not only less willing or able to back its friends abroad, but also just more likely to pull up its drawbridge and withdraw back home. And that’ll spook the dozens of smaller nations still relying on the international order the US spent most of its post-WWII life building.

So overall, the kind of fractured US revealed around Kirk’s murder is one that’s chilling for friends, and thrilling for foes.

Meanwhile, elsewhere…

Extra Intrigue

In other worlds…

• Tech: Various countries are struggling to match their big AI ambitions with the massive energy demands involved.

• Spying: The UK’s MI6 intelligence agency is launching a new online portal (Silent Courier) to allow sources in hostile countries to securely send info to London.

• Tourism: Upwards of 900 tourists have found themselves trapped in Machu Picchu, after local protestors blocked a train in anger over an alleged lack of transparency in dishing out transport contracts.

Celebration of the day

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the official kick-off for Germany’s beloved beer-drinking, sauerkraut consuming, and dirndl-wearing festival of Oktoberfest (often known locally as Wiesn). It almost evaded Intrigue’s legendary radar until Heidi Klum splashed across German papers after the supermodel somehow managed to get the Hofbräuhaus in Munich to open early so she could host her own ‘HeidiFest’!

Alas, that has nothing to do with the picture above which is the official beer jug, released every year, and dedicated for 2025 in honour of the legendary wait staff. Able to carry six beers at once, dressed to the nines in traditional clothing, and quick on their feet, the designers are declaring these workers the “true heroes” of the festival.

Compare these Munich workers to those up north in Demmin who once famously spilled five full glasses of beer down the back of ex-chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Friday quiz

Tomorrow (Saturday) is World Cleanup Day.