From the White House to the Big House

In the United States of America, the law and order party currently has a law and order problem.  Looks like the Republican nominee for president is wanted on 91 felony counts in four states. Simultaneously his businesses are in civil court in New York, losing on fraud and financial misdoings charges, just like his charities and his um, University. There are so many misdoings a foot that our boy Donny John might just be misdone. His indicted co-conspirators are starting to flip like breakfast pancakes and he’s hemorrhaging green to pay the legal team.  The one-man crime spree of Donald J. Trump might just be on his way to the Big House.

From the White House to the Big house.  Cue the music: Jail to the chief.

Helicopter Prison Break Raw Footage: 

https://globalnews.ca/video/2581405/raw-dramatic-saint-jerome-prison-escape

Transcript

YES WE CANADA THE PROGRESSIVES GUIDE TO GETTING THE FUCK OUT

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE BIG HOUSE

Canada curious eh? Of course, you are!  This is the Yes, We Canada podcast, the progressives guide…to getting the fuck out.

 Welcome to season three, this episode? From the White House…to the Big House. 

MZ:  Hey I’m Matt Zimbel in Montreal. 

 March 17, 2013 was a fresh winter day in St. Jerome, Quebec. Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau a member of the Hells Angels and an accused murderer and his buddy Dany Provençal who was serving time for B&E and arson, were grabbing some fresh air in the outdoor exercise yard at the St. Jerome Detention Facility, 60 Kilometers Northwest of Montreal.

 Meanwhile, about an hour north of St. Jerome, in Mt. Tremblant, two tourists…tourists?  Hey, guys can we check with the control room on that – are we really calling them tourists? 

What?  Season three and we still don’t have a control room. Ok. Whatever – tourists Mathieu Steven Marchisio, 21, and Yagé Beaudoin, 24 were boarding a helicopter flight they had booked for an ariel ‘tour’ of St. Jerome.  They we both wearing large backpacks, which seemed, a little unusual to chopper pilot Sébastien Foray.  

 Now, you regular listeners know, Canada’s a big tent country, a super inclusive place where everyone’s welcome so pilot Foray ignored his spidey sense cuz it didn’t feel it right to be too judgey with a couple of young male tourists with backpacks who just wanted an ariel tour of a beautiful Quebec town on a random cold day in March.

 A few minutes after the chopper took off the guns came out, the helicopter’s comms system was disabled and a “regular tourist visit” - oh we’ve heard that one before!...  became a hijacking with a side order of kidnapping.

 And this is where it gets very exciting, in fact… positively Hollywoodesque…

 The hijackers order the pilot to land the chopper on the roof of a building next to the prison yard, they drop out a rope and then, oh, you’re not going to believe me here, (laughing) oh this is so incredible it would never happen in a movie…(laughing)

 They drop the rope out of the chopper and the two prisoners spend the next six minutes trying to climb the rope – six minutes! 

 The chopper’s parked on a roof, its blades are spinning – noisy as all get up! And the two prisoners who likely imagined themselves as Navy Seals when they conceived this hair brained plot didn’t have the strength to scale the 8 foot rope and get on board.  

Six full minutes after landing on the roof the hijackers abandon their plan to actually board the prisoners and tell them to hold on to the god damn rope and the chopper yanks them up out of the yard and fly’s away – with their felons a dangling.

Now, I know you don’t believe me.

 Well, six minutes? Where all were the guards? I used to pilot birds in Nam…six minutes?  That’s an fuckin’ eternity to be on the ground. Shit! why didn’t them guards shoot to kill? What are y’all doing with yer law and order in Canadastan. Hold my goddamn beer.  

Well, we’ve linked entire raw video footage in the episode text so you can verify this six-minute video yourself and hopefully while you are doing sit ups and squats, so when your prison break comes you can slither up that rope in seconds, without mussin’ up your hair do – just like Tom Cruise. 

 Now, the reason the guards didn’t shoot to kill is because guards inside prisons in Quebec don’t have guns. 

 What? Shit!  Down here in America children in daycares have guns – god dammit, could you hold my beer 

 Americans, we know how much you love your firefights – and I just want to assure you that like every good film, this escape ends with a firefight when the Quebec Provincial Police catch the fugitives.  But it was a Canadian firefight and no one was hurt. The pilot was treated for “shock” and after years of therapy even today he still finds rope and fat guys kinda triggering. 

 But man this was a great story… lead every news cast in the country…journalists in Quebec got to break out their favorite prison break vocab, “fugitives of justice” and my personal fav “holed up” – which is the place where a fugitive from justice lives during an escape. They were holed up in a sugar shack.  They were holed up in a luxury condo, they were holed up in a colonoscopy. Well maybe not that one. 

The St. Jerome helicopter assisted prison break was not the first helicopter break out of a prison, but I will betcha it was the longest, watching the raw footage you keep thinking man there’s gotta be a commercial break somewhere around here! 

 But this got us thinking – how common are helicopter prison break?  There have been 47 attempted breaks via whirly bird. Most of them happened in happened in France, because you know:   ze wine in prison la ba c’est ne pas du buvable.  

C’est le merde totale. 

Dégueulasse!   Bouf! 

 On y va?

Now check this out 6 of the 47 helicopter breaks were either hijacked or piloted by the girlfriend or wife of the prisoner!  Including the Australian librarian – 

 Allo mate did you say librarian?  A librarian hijacked a chopper? To spring her Bruce back from the correctional - Blime! A librarian … springing a Bruce?

 Yep, Librarian Lucy Dudko, also known as Red Lucy.  You see her husband John Killick was a guest of the state for 28 years for armed robbery.    

 28 years without a shag, good on ya Shelagh!  How hard could it be to hijack a chopper right? 

 Wrong.

 Of course, there’s a song about it- and it’s not the only one – in fact helicopter prison break songs…oh man, they’re a whole sub-genre – like country rap – or, as we call it on the pod “hick-hop”.

 Ok, guys, I’m sorry to do this to you but I need a quick personal moment here ‘scuse me for a sec:  um,  Babe, babe, if anything ever happens to me, if you play this episode backwards it will teach you how to fly a helicopter –sweetie,  I’ll be expecting you – love you babe!”

 Yes, I know party faithful – you’re all, like … where is this all going? – this is season three?  Another rambling, incoherent season of Yes, We Canada – what’s the goddamn point?  I’m an American, my time is valuable to me …

Right…we’re with ya. Enough freaking story telling here’s the buried lede:

 In the United States of America, the law-and-order party currently has a law-and-order problem.  Looks like the Republican nominee for president is wanted on 91 felony counts in four states. Simultaneously his businesses are in civil court in New York, losing on fraud and financial misdoings charges, just like his charities and his um, University. There are so many misdoings a foot that our boy Donny John might just be misdone. His indicted co-conspirators are starting to flip like breakfast pancakes and he’s hemorrhaging green to pay the legal team.  The one-man crime spree of Donald J. Trump might just be on his way to the Big House.

 From the White House to the Big house.  Cue the music: Jail to the chief.

Ok, we’re going to fast forward here a little, 

Sure, there will be appeals, delays and talk of pardons, but here’s the numbers –the stats – on just how evasive freedom is for folks once they are charged with a federal crime in the United States. 

In 2022, 71,954 people were accused of federal crimes in the United States. Only 290 of them were acquitted.  0.4 percent!  You do not want to fuck with the American justice system – now I’m not saying it’s fair – it’s probably far from fair, especially if you are not a white, white collar criminal, but that’s a pretty astounding success rate for federal prosecutors.

 91 charges. Including racketeering, conspiracy, abuse of state secrets, there are so many charges in so many states, as a side hustle here at Yes, We Canada, we are pleased to announce that our programmers are developing a Trump Indictment Tracker app for your phone. 

 Now, I’m not a lawyer but I am Jewish… which is almost the same thing…Donny… this is not going to end well, if I were you, I’d keep my passport in my pocket and Trump Force One gassed up and ready for takeoff, because you my boy might be America’s first President in Exile!

Jail to the chief. Easy to say but, what does that look like? In America we love our white-collar criminals…so much so, in fact we built a special place to house them when they’ve been naughty - because in America our white-collar criminals are lightly incarcerated.  

 Ahhhh, Club Fed!  

 Racquet ball anyone?  Hey, Bobby Joe, what’s the appetizer tonight? Do we have any of that delicious White Bordeaux in the cellar? Yeah, boys it’s going to be a lovely day here. 

 But lockin’ him up is way more complicated. 

 You see while people have run for president from jail, a former president has never been incarcerated… although Bill Clinton famously said of the White House, “I don’t know whether it’s the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the prison system.”

 You see, when you’re done presidenting, you don’t just walk out the Rose Garden, grab your car keys from the White House valet and tool away… you have an entourage, a motorcade, a secret service detail, your spouse has a secret service detail, your kids under sixteen have a secret service detail… you get free mailing for non-political mail, the government gives you a staff budget, and an office budget,  I mean Jeez man, you don’t have to store the top-secret documents you stole from the White House in the shitter!  

 Hmm, oh that’s interesting…wow, I didn’t know that. Hmmmm

 I read Government Services Administration documents so you don’t have to. And let me tell you, you guys have looked after your ex-presidents pretty sweetly since about Eisenhower’s time – the package is now worth about 2.5 million a year, plus Secret Service protection for life, for you and the misses! Or Mr. as the case may be. 

 This means that when Trump goes to jail…he will arrive in a motorcade with Secret Service protection. And this is where it gets super complicated.

 I’m thinking that the Maga heads are not going to enjoy having their boy DT locked up in Club Fed. It’s going to be the final straw for the delusionals.  

 We gotta free DT, Billy this ain’t right…we gotta free DT!  hold my beer. 

 They’re going to break him out.  And that’s cool, we love drama like that – but man that’s complicated – like what does the Secret Service do in that scenario? – do they work to Free  Donny or do they work for the state – do they side with the Maga Mob or with the prison guards. Now it’s not the first time Donny and the Service didn’t exactly see eye to eye. 

As Donny’s slender 215 lb frame glides up the rope with not a hair out of place, and into the chopper is the secret service obliged to leave with him or let him go?  The helicopter ferry’s, sorry ferry, the helicopter will transport our man Donny to an airport, he hops on Trump Force One and before you know it, he’s playing golf in Saudi Arabia with political asylum. 

 Ok my American exceptionalist friends, I know you hate this when we do it, but we have to talk about Canada for a second. I mean it’s in the podcast title, right?  

 I thought “fuck” was in the title. Hold my beer.

 Well, that’s not wrong, either.  Got your beer bud. 

 So, Canada yeah?  I promise it will be short and I promise you that it will be “Canada” from your American exceptionalist point of view.   When you move to Canada, you’re gonna need to find a job.  

 Have you thought about Prime Minister?  You see, unlike in the US you don’t need to be born here to become PM.  There are only 4 pre-qualifying criteria; you have to be over 18, you have to be a Canadian Citizen, a member of parliament and the leader of your party. Oh man, you got this.  I’m thinking we can get that listicle done in 7 maybe 8 years from the moment you step over the border. Boom.  Welcome to Canada Prime Minister. 

 Oh, there’s no job opening at the moment, but the gig does come up from time to time and check this out – unlike your guy – the Canadian Prime Minister is not subject to term limits, so once you nail the gig, you can stay in office as long as the people love you…which… is the big problem in Canada… because people here love to follow …but hate to be led.  I’ll let you chew on that for a second.

 Most Prime Ministers in Canada are boys, but we had a girl once for a few days.  Most Prime Ministers used to be lawyers before becoming politicians.  Our current Prime Minister used to be a drama teacher – which turned out to be fantastic on the job training because one of the major skills of a drama teacher is dealing with self centered, emotionally immature teenagers with huge egos which turned out to be the ideal “on the job training” for Justin Trudeau and when he had to renegotiate a trade deal with Donald Trump. 

 When you walk into a room as president, the band plays Hail to the Chief and everyone rises. 

When you walk into a room as Prime Minister, we don’t give a hail and no one rises…but you do get a way better title: 

 Please welcome The Right Honourable your name here: ___________   For life! 

 And yet? A man cannot live on a title alone – you also get a salary 379,000 Canadian a year, Which, is about 35k American, plus a swanky office in a historic building, a cottage and you used to get a mansion but it got condemned and now only pigeons and rats live in it. Um, not going there. 

 You also get a security detail from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And for us up here VIP security is a two-way street because sometimes the protected get violent with us poor citizens – Once our Prime Minister Jean Chretien once put a protestor in a choke hold, so we’re always happy to have the RCMP around the PM for our protection. 

 When a PM retires, they can retain a security detail if they want but few do and it’s not unusual to bump into your ex-Prime Minister, say at the local Tim Hortons, or maybe at the Wall Mart, and certainly if they’re an ex-Prime Minister from the Conservative party you can usually bump into them at any of the International Arms Dealer’s conventions you go to. 

 So, when our PM’s leave office, they are a lot cheaper to room and board than your ex’s. But enough about us let’s talk more about you! Shall we?  Oh, I knew you would love that! 

 In 1974 your Justice department ruled that presidents that retire from office early get the same official ex office terms as any ex-president. I guess you could call that the Nixon clause. But check this out…a president who is removed from office due to impeachment, is not granted any retirement benefits. Now, sadly, Donald Trump was not removed from office when he was twice impeached. 

 But that’s our question for the call-in on today’s show:  Should an ex-president, convicted of between 1 and 91felonies, be entitled to the benefits of the Former Presidents Act. 

Call us, lines are open, producers are standing by … 1 800 go2 jail – hello you’re on the air…

 Thanks for listening to Yes, We Canada, the Progressives Guide to getting the Fuck Out.  

 On this episode:   our sound designer and mix engineer is Pi Cutler. Lucas Choi Zimbel and Urthboy provided the music and Manteca wrote and performed our theme. My name is Lisa Evans and I’m your announcer. We're always grateful when you hit like and subscribe. Till next time! 

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 Raw Footage Helicopter Escape: 

 https://globalnews.ca/video/2581405/raw-dramatic-saint-jerome-prison-escape