By Ana Laura Dagorret*
Trump’s arrest in New York was probably one of the top news stories of the week. Major media outlets in the United States and around the world reflected the event with live broadcasts, analysis from legal and political specialists and speculation about the former president’s future ahead of next year’s elections.
However, the story was more about the expectations of imprisonment than about the prison itself. What was sold forcefully as an “arrest” was in fact the voluntary appearance of the former president before the Manhattan court to hear and defend himself against the 34 accusations against him.
The way in which the news was approached already gives an account of the construction of the story and the motives. Trump was not arrested in handcuffs or escorted against his will to be presented before the prosecution and a judge. He rather appeared voluntarily and was released after defending himself. However, by talking about “Trump’s imprisonment”, the aim is to build that image with which it is intended to delegitimize the figure of the former president from now on.
The motive is clear: What is concretely sought is to eliminate Trump as a candidate for president in 2024. “The globalist sector that leads the Democratic Party seeks to generate an event that delegitimizes, fragments and weakens the majority, firm and hard position that Trump has within the Republican Party,” explains Walter Formento, Director of the Center for Research on Politics and Economics (CIEPE) of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), in an interview with UWI.
Attempt to defame Trump among his conservative constituency
The chances that these accusations could keep him out of the dispute are low, since they are allegations of falsification of business records, a minor crime in New York State. However, the story about the payment through the Trump Organization of alleged bribes to a porn actress with whom the former president allegedly had a relationship, so far the most highlighted aspect of the reports on the allegations, seek to defame Trump among his most conservative constituency and, with that, subtract strength from him for 2024.
Such a strategy also has the potential to leave a negative balance. Just as it would increase the chances of the Democrats in the electoral dispute, the judicial persecution of the former president also tends to deepen the situation of rupture within the country itself. For Formento, it is a provocation. “I think what this situation does is to deepen the confrontation, which is also going to deepen the civil war situation in the United States.”
Just as it happened on January 6, 2021, when thousands of fanatics forcibly entered the Capitol in an attempt to stop Biden’s confirmation as president-elect, the possibility of another event of similar characteristics should not be ruled out. This was even requested by the former president himself days ago when he warned about the possibility of imprisonment and called on his followers to protest. Such possibility is reinforced by the fact that 40% of American voters believe that there was the fraud that brought Biden to the presidency.
Part of the U.S. army supports Trump
“The problem with Trump is that he has leadership”, emphasizes Formento, “a great rooting in the Republican Party, he is a driver of shock and confrontation groups, that is to say, that he is not afraid of that situation”. At the same time, the director of CIEPE points out that “there is a part of the US army that supports him and what is happening is that the civil war is entering a phase in which we are going to see an expanded use of firearms”.
One of the main reasons for relegating Trump from the 2024 contest has to do with the direction of U.S. foreign policy. During the years he ruled the country, the focus was on containing China, for which Trump sought a rapprochement with Putin. After his departure, the government commanded by financial globalism reopened its battlefront with Russia in Ukraine. This had already been set in motion in 2014 with the Euromaidan and the coup against Yanukovich, but after Trump’s victory in 2016, it began to lose intensity.
The former president himself went so far as to say on more than one occasion that he could solve the war in Ukraine in one day. It so happens that the continuation of the war is one of the priorities of the deep state sector ruling in the United States. Taking into account Trump’s strong leadership and his stance on this issue, the urgency to keep him out of the race has already set in motion a series of judicial mechanisms to prevent him from contesting the presidency.
Confrontation between financial and commercial banking
But the confrontation is not only related to the approach to foreign policy but also to domestic economic issues. As Formento explains, “the globalist wing, the global investment financial funds, which are the ones ruling the country today, not only clash with Trump but also with the whole old oligarchy based on the extraction of oil and fossil gas”. For the director of CIEPE, this dispute “is a confrontation between financial banking and commercial banking. These are all different planes of deep and structural confrontation, like an economic, financial war, I think there is also a cultural ideological war”.
After being released, Trump returned to Florida, where he spoke to his audience and said that the criminal allegations made against him were wrong, politically motivated and “an insult to the country. The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” Whatever comes next to prevent the former president from contesting the 2024 elections promises to deepen the rift in the United States and radicalize sectors already dissatisfied with the country’s economic and social situation.
*Ana Laura Dagorret is an international politics journalist in noticiaspia.com and she is also co-author of the Brief Manual of Geopolitics.