2018- The Year in Review
2018 passed by with such rapidity that we find ourselves on the precipice of 2019 largely indisposed and vastly unprepared to the prospect of a whole new year. Nevertheless, we recall and recount the major events that comprised the year in passing, as its final seconds tick down:
January- The year began much as it would eventually end, with President Trump battling Democrats, and a few Republicans, over border wall funding as part of a comprehensive deal which would have included provisions for DACA, and other provisions dealing with chain migration and the visa lottery program. Republican failures to get behind this initiative would prove to cost them their majority in the House of Representatives the following November. A false alarm on the Hawaiian Islands alerted residents that an inbound missile, purportedly launched from North Korea, sent emergency officials into panic mode but nevertheless called into question the very system designed to alert us in the event of an actual attack.
February- Revelations that former President Barack Obama “wanted to know everything” that former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page were up to in September of 2016, in their efforts to take down Trump’s campaign sent alarm throughout the halls of Washington, yet by year’s end the texts from Page and Strzok conveniently disappeared while in the custody of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation of the President continued into its second full year. A tragic school shooting in Parkland called into question the wisdom of declaring public schools “gun-free zones” and the fact that the FBI is much more adept at pursuing false claims of Trump/Russian collusion than they are at following up on actual and verifiable leads that a potential school shooter is plotting a deadly agenda to wreak havoc and mayhem.
March- Having been “rolled” by their Democrat counterparts in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell swallows yet another continuing resolution to fund the government through year’s end without securing funding for a border wall on the U.S./Mexico border. The Democrats get all of the funding for their legislative priorities, while House Speaker Paul Ryan and Mitchell convince President Trump that this was a “good deal” for the American people. Trump reluctantly signs off on the continuing resolution, promising there will be no other such deals that do not fund border security. Following OPR recommendations for his termination, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is fired, for having lied to investigators on more than one occasion, regarding his involvement in both the Hillary Clinton e-mail and in the alleged Trump/Russia collusion investigations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would also get his own walking papers from the President himself, following a contentious year between the two where the Secretary seemed to be at odds with the President’s foreign policy.
April – Attorney/Client privilege fell prey to the ongoing Mueller investigation as Michael Cohen’s offices and home are subjected to an early morning raid by investigators bent on finding anything and everything they can to use to impugn the President and find evidence of a crime which did not exist. Meanwhile, House Republicans sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department for former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, FBI Counsel Lisa Page, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Attorney General Dana Boente, recommending formal investigation into multiple violations of federal statutes in the way that both the Clinton e-mail scandal and the Trump/Russia investigations were handled. The Justice Department, under recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein fail to act on the referral, essentially absolving these eight individuals from further prosecution.
May- President Donald Trump kept a major campaign promise by formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocating the United States Embassy to that city from its former location in Tel Aviv. His actions also fulfilled promises of his predecessors, going back decades, to both recognize and relocate the American embassy to the ancient capital of the Jewish nation. Further evidence of high-level corruption in the Obama administration came to light but, again, the Justice Department under Sessions and Rosenstein fail to act on this evidence, revealing a double-standard within the Department- one for Trump, and the other for Obama and Clinton.
June- Following an episode of her own show where Samantha Bee referred to the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, as a “feckless *unt,” yet another double-standard on what constitutes acceptable speech is revealed, where any and all such hate speech directed at Trump and his allies is deemed acceptable by a Hollywood elite who would never tolerate such language directed at any Democrat. Predictably, they all fell into line supporting such attacks levied at Trump and his family. Trump delivered a speech to the G-7 Summit in Charlevoix Quebec, coming down on the side of the American worker and rejecting imbalanced trade deals going back decades, which penalized American workers at the behest of post-war emerging economies following the end of World War II. Later that month, Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore and hammered out a preliminary agreement aimed at ratcheting down the rhetoric between both countries while at the same time facilitating the eventual de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
July- Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announced retirement, elicited scores of protests within seconds of the announcement. Trump also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland and was roundly criticized for not having publicly taken the Russian leader to task for alleged interference in the 2016 election. When Putin revealed during a follow-up press conference that Russian interests had donated over $400 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation in order to facilitate the sale of nuclear assets during her tenure as Secretary of State, as well as her presidential campaigns, the news media “buried” this revelation under the aegis that Trump was letting Putin off easy in failing to condemn him at the press conference.
August- At mid-month, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that the Trump administration was revoking the security clearance of ten high-level Obama administration officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. The announcement set off a cacophony of protests, made largely by those who would seek to end the Trump presidency any way possible.
September- Senate Confirmation hearings on President Trump’s nomination of U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh devolved into the theater of the absurd, with Democrats taking the hearings to an all-time low. Eleventh-hour allegations that that Kavanaugh once sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford three dozen years before- allegations completely devoid of evidence and witnesses who could corroborate the allegations, threatened to derail the nomination. During her dramatic, albeit self-conflicting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Democrats ushered in at least three other allegations by women whose claims are ultimately proved to be false. This overreach was largely credited with an expanding Republican caucus in the Senate elections later that fall.
October- The first caravan of Central Americans seeking to illegally enter the United States breached the border of Guatemala and Mexico, as many thousands from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador- primarily young men- begin the long journey through Mexico which eventually ended up in Tijuana, on the Baja California peninsula. Trump’s determination not to let them breach the U.S. Mexican border led to a confrontation with border guards and the would-be trespassers, where tear gas was used to fend off attacks of stone throwers in the month following. Under-reported was the fact that this caravan, and the ones to follow, were and are being facilitated by liberal U.S. attorneys who advocate an open border and oppose the Trump administration’s policies on immigration.
November- House Democrats were successful in flipping forty seats in the House of Representatives, thanks in large measure to the failure of the House Republican leadership under outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan, to pursue President Trump’s agenda on a multitude of legislative fronts, including promised funding for a border wall, which Ryan secretly opposed. While Republicans managed to increase their majority in the Senate, while at the same time ridding itself of NeverTrump/anti-Trump Republicans Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) and the late John McCain (R-AZ) who died at the end of August, Trump’s position in the Senate actually improved, as a result of the election. While the media predictably sought to blame Trump for the loss of the House, it became obvious that the loss had far more to do with the feckless leadership on the part of Ryan, than anything that the President had or hadn’t done.
December- Too little and too late, House Republicans summoned the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey concerning false statements he had previously made before House investigative committees. Also sought was testimony from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch concerning her handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. With House Democrats set to take back control of the House as well as its investigative committees, it is doubtful that further investigation into Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration will proceed into the next biennium, while the quest to find a reason to impeach the President is likely to gain steam in the lower house. The passing of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, seven months following the passing of his wife, Barbara Bush diverted media attention for about a week, while a standoff between President Trump and House and Senate Democrats over border wall funding led to a partial shutdown of 25% of federal government departments and agencies not currently funded for the next year. While the President cancelled his own Christmas and New Year’s celebration plans set for his residence at Mar-a- Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and decided to remain in the White House seeking a resolution to the impasse, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) decided to spend the holidays at a tony Hawaiian resort abiding her time until her party retakes the House on January 3rd, 2019.
Surely, there were other major events taking place in 2018, but this recounting has caused us to reach for both leftover eggnog and antacids that only such a year can bring about.
May your New Year be blessed with happiness, health and prosperity.
-Drew Nickell, 31 December 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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