Big Apple & Banana Republic
Trump verdict bulletin
Surely you know by now that former President Donald Trump was convicted last week of 34 felony charges in a New York state court centering around bookkeeping issues related to payments to Stormy Daniels, thereby becoming the first former U.S. president to receive a criminal conviction after leaving office. Trump now awaits his sentencing, scheduled for 11 July.
Commentary from The Telegraph last Friday offered a view of the international reaction, arguing that the conviction represents a profound miscarriage of justice driven by political motivations rather than legal merit. Here, William Jacobson and Kemberlee Kaye criticize Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg for allegedly fabricating a legal theory to transform minor misdemeanors into felonies, and accuse the trial judge of bias and procedural misconduct. They warn that this politically charged prosecution undermines the integrity of the American justice system, likening it to authoritarian tactics, and predict it will exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country, potentially leading to greater unrest and a loss of faith in democratic institutions.
Of course, looking at the crowd of war-criminal clowns that Trump has for colleagues, I think justice will be best served if he isn’t the first of them to catch a sentencing. But on balance, I’d prefer to see those cases tried at the International Criminal Court. As it stands, however, we can now rest assured only that Trump’s won’t be the last political prosecution that passes through the U.S. courts. Maybe Biden knows that his increasingly severe dementia has already protected him once from criminal charges, so that’s why his face stuttered into that creepy smile when asked about Trump’s conviction. (Though don’t ask me how a demented person can know anything.)
But those of you who tuned in to Radio Free Pizza at the start of the year know that we’re looking out for signs of potential U.S. civil unrest, knowing how frequently the term “civil war” has surfaced in recent years—especially after notable events like the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022. We also worried in that dispatch about the Colorado State Supreme Court exacerbating unrest with its ruling to remove Trump from state ballots for his role in the January 2021 honeypot at the U.S. capitol, though fortunately the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that ruling in March. To top it all off, we cited James Evan Pilato of Media Monarchy gambling on a possible reversal of the 2020 protest dynamics, with unrest potentially becoming more prominent among conservatives than among their progressive counterparts. (We also mentioned the then-upcoming release of Civil War [2024], which I haven’t seen yet.)
One of the figures from our last bulletin, Martin Armstrong, seems to agree. In a post last Saturday the economic forecaster predicted that the conviction will contribute to a decline in the U.S. legal system, with severe societal and economic consequences. Armstrong foresees increased global conflict and an imminent World War III resulting from the American neoconservative proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, believing that these judicial maneuvers against Trump will come paired with efforts to enter a global war before the 2024 elections.
As Armstrong sees it, this conviction comes right on time, with his economic models having long reported the U.S. as on track to collapse in 2032, triggering the reinvention of the worldwide monetary system following the U.S. defaulting on all its sovereign bonds. That’s more or less the tone of his posts about 2032, anyhow—and, I suppose, one of the inspirations behind our repeated efforts to imagine its successor as the United People’s Commonwealths of America (UPCA). But I can say with certainty that Armstrong inspired me to keep track of the most likely military targets for a nuclear strike on the U.S., so I can stay 100 miles or more away from them:
Kitsap NB (WA)
Jim Creek NAVRADSTA (WA)
Malmstrom AFB (MT)
Minot AFB (ND)
Warren AFB (WY)
Hill AFB (UT)
Kirkland AFB (NM)
King’s Bay NB (GA)
Whiteman AFB (MO)
Barksdale AFB (LA)
Vandenberg SFB (CA)
Fort Greely (AK)
USCENTCOM (FL)
Ellsworth AFB (SD)
Dyess AFB (TX)
Forewarned is forearmed, right? But even so, maybe it would do us well to look at current signs and causes of civil unrest, and to chart potential outbreak scenarios and predictable government responses. But rather than run too far with this narrative just yet—and, some might say, thereby run the risk of helping bring it to fruition—we’ll try to keep it light for now, and stick to coverage from comedians: i.e., to The Jimmy Dore Show.
Dore criticized the treatment of former President Trump last Friday, and in this first clip expresses frustration with the political establishment. Referencing a tweet from @Rothbard1776 arguing that the conviction indicates the system’s willingness to “burn the entire system to the ground” to maintain power—even against a relatively moderate figure like Trump—Dore suggests that if Trump had been a true conservative reformer, he would have faced more severe consequences.
(Interestingly, co-host Kurt Metzger suggests a perceived timetable for certain goals, mentioning [at ~2:18] the WEF’s “Great Reset” agenda [which we covered last year] and the need to “hit 2030”—likely a reference to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Here at Radio Free Pizza, we hypothesize that the aforementioned signals in Armstrong’s models, which forecast the importance of 2032, have some relationship to them both.)
Accordingly, Dore expresses his frustration (at ~2:25) with the political establishment, stating that “liberals no longer liberate, they just legislate on the behalf of the powerful” and “conservatives don’t actually conserve anything.” Overall, the tone is characteristically anti-establishment and critical of both major political parties.
In a second clip, Dore argues that Trump’s indictment is a political prosecution, citing the lack of prosecution against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their actions related to the Iraq War and torture program as evidence of a double standard, describing it (at ~0:12) as “proof that […] we are now a banana republic.” He also draws parallels (at ~6:52) between Trump’s alleged conduct and Bill Clinton’s $850,000 payment to Paula Jones in 1998 to settle her sexual harassment suit, and also compares it to the Clinton campaign misreporting campaign finance expenditures related to the Steele dossier, for which the Democratic National Committee was fined $105,000 and the Clinton campaign fined $8,000. For good measure, he throws in the $17 million paid as of 2017 to settle sexual harassment complaints by Congress’ Office of Compliance since its creation in 1995.
Dore argues that the Clintons engaged in similar or worse conduct without facing criminal charges. Accordingly, he views the prosecution as an attempt to prevent Trump from successfully running for office again, and therefore as an assault on the democratic process. He also criticizes (at ~16:11) the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story by social media platforms and the media, which falsely suggested it was an attempt to influence the 2020 election, and accuses the media and tech companies of lying about the story being Russian disinformation. (For more info on that story, and on the broader campaign to exaggerate the threat of foreign influence and thereby justify policies of surveillance and censorship, I recommend Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century” which Tablet published in March.)
In this final clip, Dore goes on to discuss Trump’s response to his recent conviction in a clip vowing to “demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers,” “drive out the globalists,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists.” (Casting out those first two would put a real damper on MAGA Communism!) He seems excited about Trump’s combative rhetoric, stating that it “works” and will likely gain him more supporters. Dore also mentions that Trump’s campaign announced a record-breaking $34.8 million in small-dollar donations following his conviction, nearly doubling their previous best day on the WinRed donation platform.
After speculating that Trump’s conviction will gain him more supporters, Dore suggests (at ~3:34) that the Democrats may attempt to rig the 2024 election, citing past claims of Russian interference in 2016 and previous concerns over vulnerable voting machines. (He forgot to mention, I suppose, the predictable interference from Big Tech, on the subject of which he twice interviewed Dr. Robert Epstein.) He argues that the Democrats’ actions, such as the impeachments and prosecutions of Trump, are part of a broader effort to rig the system against him.
So, that’s what a comedian thinks of these clowns! But now that we’ve had a little fun, I still gotta ask: what do you think more collegiate commentators think about it?
Glenn Greenwald has some thoughts, which he provided on the night of Trump’s conviction. In the clip above, Greenwald outlines the four criminal proceedings against Trump: the Manhattan case involving hush money payments, two cases related to his post-election conduct and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and the classified documents case in Florida. After unpacking the potential severity of convictions in these cases, Greenwald suggests the Manhattan offense is comparatively trivial and personal in nature, arguing that the case is legally weak and unprecedented, and that the judge presided over the trial in a politicized manner, catering to the heavily Democratic-leaning Manhattan jury pool.
He also covers Trump’s reaction to the guilty verdict, where he denounces the trial as rigged and corrupt, and claims the conviction is a political ploy by the Biden Administration to wound a political opponent. Greenwald seems to agree, predicting that Trump’s campaign will portray the conviction as evidence of a corrupt justice system abused by Democrats for political ends, and presents polling data suggesting that while most Trump supporters would remain loyal, around 20% might reconsider their support if he is convicted of a felony. However, Greenwald argues that the perceived political motivation behind the charges could backfire on Democrats and rally more support for Trump.
Greenwald cites examples of Democrats and liberal pundits explicitly stating their belief that convicting Trump before the election is crucial to undermine his candidacy. Drawing on his own legal background, Greenwald argues that the speed at which prosecutors pursued these cases—particularly the post-election conduct cases—was driven by the election timeline rather than legal considerations.
Accordingly, it would behoove us to monitor the appeals process and any potential overturning of the conviction by appellate courts before the election, and to assess the potential impact of the remaining criminal proceedings against Trump—particularly the post-election conduct cases and the classified documents case—on his candidacy, and on public perception of his ongoing prosecution.
But what can we expect to come of all this, in terms of civil war? I don’t know: like I said, I didn’t see the movie. But the aforementioned Martin Armstrong did, and offered his thoughts on it in April:
The movie […] truly feels and appears to be real, which would be utterly terrifying to some in Washington who realize that all republics die by their own hand of corruption, which leads to civil war and revolution. They should be worried, for Republics Survive ONLY in the shadow of Disinterested Judgment. Once the government pursues its own self-interest, the die has been cast, and it is only a question of time, which, in this case, is 2032.
Armstrong also defends the film‘s portrayal of states like Texas and California joining forces to secede from federal control, maintaining that “they would ban together if both sought to secede but for their own different reasons” and comparing such a situation to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
While other commentators have noted the film’s president character bears Trump-like qualities—suggesting the chaos that could ensue from Trump’s leadership—Armstrong praises the film’s narrative for emphasizing that the identity of the leader is less critical than the overarching issues of power and control, for which reason the film declines to elaborate on its factions’ political agendas. Recognizing that the film reflects fears of an imminent civil war in the U.S., exacerbated by political corruption and the erosion of the rule of law—which he observed in the charges against Trump just over a month before his recent conviction—Armstrong finds Civil War to present a grim yet thought-provoking depiction of the U.S.’s potential future that authentically captures capturing its audience’s anxiety about their country’s trajectory.
Though I didn’t catch it in theaters, I’m glad I’m not the only one worried about how the U.S. exhibits more and more characteristics of those “banana republics” it so diligently propped up to serve the capital order.
Trump’s recent conviction and the ensuing reactions underscore the deep political divisions and the perceived erosion of the rule of law in the United States. Viewed by many as politically motivated, that conviction could have significant implications for the 2024 election and for the broader political landscape. As commentators like Armstrong suggest, the unfolding judicial and societal turmoil could have profound implications, potentially hastening America’s decline and fueling broader conflicts. The sense of an impending crisis, with fears of civil unrest and systemic corruption, reflects growing anxieties about the nation’s trajectory. Accordingly, the unfolding judicial and societal turmoil may not only impact the upcoming elections but also contribute to that broader sense of instability, perhaps causing it to spiral into a period of violent unrest.
Unfortunately, we can’t offer much in the way of optimism, at least in the near term. But if or when a second U.S. civil war erupts, at least you can count on Radio Free Pizza for a follow-up bulletin about it. (“Make sure to watch your inbox!”)