2017- The Year in Review

2017- What a year it was!

As if 2016 wasn’t eventful enough, in truly stunning and storied ways, 2017 proved to be a year of great consequence in the long view of a history in the making. As we recall…

• January brought us the inauguration of a new president, in the midst of violent leftist protests and a juvenile boycott of the ceremony itself, by many Democrats in the House of Representatives. Though predictably panned by his many critics, President Trump delivered a terse and declarative address, signaling a change in focus on domestic matters and a new set of priorities with regards to the United States on the world stage.

• February witnessed the beginning of a coordinated effort to stop the new Trump presidency in its tracks. FBI Director James Comey met with President Trump and assured him that he was not under investigation in any way, although Comey refused to acknowledge this publicly, leading the public to believe that Trump was under investigation. Lawyers, exploiting the leftist bent of the ninth circuit court, entered injunctions against the Trump administration, bringing a temporary halt to the president’s executive order, banning travel from specific countries. Trump delivered his first state of the union speech which was widely acclaimed for its vision, substance and delivery. In it, he outlined a bold and ambitious legislative agenda he intended to pursue in the coming first year of his administration.

• March saw the clumsy and ill-prepared rollout of the Republican American Health Care Act which proved to be a half-baked attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare. In reality it would have neither repealed nor replaced the Affordable Care Act, which would lead to the eventual failure of enough Republicans, and even tepid support from the president, to back the bill. March also saw the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

• In April, President Trump was entertaining Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mara Lago estate when, during dessert, he informed the Chinese premier that U.S. Naval forces had just launched 58 cruise missiles on Syria’s Shayrat air base, in retaliation for a sarin gas attack on Syrian civilians ordered by Bashir al-Assad. It proved to be a stroke of brilliance letting the Chinese leader know that Trump was serious about North Korea to an extent no U.S. president had ever been, before. In the coming months, further testing of nuclear weapons and intermediate- and long-range missiles by the North Koreans caused the world to rethink how it should deal with that country’s rogue regime, prompting unanimous votes in the United Nations security council to further censure and place economic restrictions on North Korea.

• May began with President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, after which the terminated director illegally released to the New York Times, via a friendly Columbia University professor, transcripts of notes he had taken during three different meetings with the president. This release brought about the appointment of Comey’s mentor, Robert Mueller, to lead an independent council investigation into charges that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to deny Hillary Clinton the election. Meanwhile, President Trump met with twenty-four leaders of Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia, imploring them to rid their countries of Islamic terrorists, before addressing the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem. Following a first-ever visit to the West Bank by a sitting U.S. president, where he met with Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas, the president delivered a powerful speech in Warsaw, Poland and was on hand to dedicate the new NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In his address to NATO member nations, the president took them to task for not honoring financial commitments to provide for their own defense. In a meeting of the G-7 nations in Sicily, the president stressed the importance of ridding the world of Islamic terrorism to promote economic prosperity.

• In June, the president formally withdrew from the Paris climate accord, citing the enormous financial burden the agreement unfairly placed on the United States. Increasing violence on the part of the radical left saw violent demonstrations around the country, culminating in an assassination attempt on Republican legislators practicing for an annual baseball game on a field in Alexandria, Virginia. Seriously wounded in the attack was House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). For their own part, Democrat senators took turns slandering the character of their former colleague, Jeff Sessions (R-AL), during his confirmation hearings as the newly-appointed Attorney General.

• In July, twenty-five Democrats in the House of Representatives launched impeachment proceedings against President Trump, not for high crimes and misdemeanors as the U.S. Constitution stipulates, but rather for what they see as Trump’s unfitness for office. It marked the first time an impeachment attempt was essentially launched out of sheer, personal disdain for a sitting president. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) put the final nail into the Republican health care bill, ceremoniously thrusting a thumbs-down gesture in his crucial vote on the legislation.

• August saw violent unrest in Venezuela, as the result of the failure of yet another socialist regime to effectively govern and manage an economy. Protests for and against the removal of confederate statues heated up, most notably in Charlottesville, VA where one protester was killed when run over by another, who drove his car into a crowd of opposing protesters. Despite President Trump’s repeated condemnation of white racism in his response to the incident, the president was assailed because he noted that both sides of the debate were at fault in the escalating rhetoric and resulting violence taking place in Charlottesville. Mother Nature ended the month with her own violence, as Hurricane Harvey ravaged the southeastern coast of Texas. By declaring besieged east-Texas a federal disaster area, before the fact, President Trump had key resources already in place to effectively manage emergency response teams in providing assistance in the wake of the storm.

• September saw the president’s address to the general assembly of the United Nations for the first time in his presidency. While acknowledging the sovereign right of member nations to pursue their own respective national interests, the president also made it known that the United States would place the interests of its own citizens at the forefront of its foreign policy, going forward. In a brilliant stroke of political genius, the president sent DACA back to congress and thus avoided the anticipated and predictable outrage, had he summarily rescinded Obama’s executive order, regarding same. In doing so, he put the burden of immigration reform back on congress, where it rightfully should have been all along.

• October began with carnage on an unprecedented scale with the death of 58 and the wounding of 546 concert-goers in Las Vegas- all at the hands of a single gunman perched high in his nest situated on the thirty-second floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, across the street. While the NFL continued to see dwindling attendance numbers and television ratings, in the wake of player protests during the national anthem, revelations of sexual improprieties of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein began an avalanche of similar allegations that would eventually ensnare Alabama Judge Roy Moore running for that state’s senate seat, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI), among others. Revelations that the Obama administration was actively involved with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to sabotage the Trump campaign with a fake dossier, which was paid for by both the Clinton campaign and the FBI and which, in turn, was used to gain FISA warrants against Trump campaign operatives. Further revelations of corruption on the part of the Clintons caused a relook into the 2010 sale of uranium assets to Uranium One, partially owned by the Russians, in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

• November witnessed continued carnage as a lone gunman entered a small church in Sutherland Springs, TX and killed twenty-six of its parishioners. The illegal immigrant who, in July of 2015, had killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco, was essentially acquitted of her murder due to the fact that jurors were not informed of the killer’s repeated illegal re-entries into the United States, as well as violent felonies of which he had been previously convicted. The verdict was celebrated by political opponents to the president and those who advocate open borders.

• December brought revelations that the Obama Administration had intentionally quashed investigations into domestic drug-trafficking and money-laundering by Hezbollah terrorists, all in an effort to ensure its ill-conceived and ill-considered nuclear deal with Iran. Further findings of conflicted interests, on the part of Mueller’s investigative team, continued to diminish confidence as to the legitimacy of the investigation. This prompted many in the media to erroneously report that Donald Trump intends to fire Mueller, despite repeated denials by the president, himself. For his own part, President Trump made history by formally announcing his intention to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and relocate the Tel Aviv-based U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. As promised during his campaign, and subsequently during his first year in office, President Trump delivered on this promise to have enacted, and then sign, the Tax Reform and Jobs Act by Christmas, 2017. In addition to the largest-ever reduction in federal income taxes, the new law also allows drilling in the Alaskan ANWR region and eliminates ObamaCare’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance, essentially gutting the Affordable Care Act’s most-reviled requirement, which had punished people who could least afford it.

What a year 2017 has truly been!

-Drew Nickell, 27 December 2017

© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

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