United States President Donald Trump will face increased oversight on his decisions when the new Democratic majority takes charge of the House of Representatives in January. This is after the Republican Party lost a whopping 40 seats in the midterm elections allowing Democrats to gain control of one chamber of Government while the GOP retained the Senate.
In a year that saw increased attacks on the media, a divisive struggle to appoint his second Supreme Court Justice, an escalation in trade wars and numerous developments in the Special Counsel investigation into possible malfeasance by the Trump campaign in 2016, 2018 was jam-packed for the 45th President of the United States.
An investigation that has been a canvass of the President’s almost two years in office. Led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller who has indicted or obtained guilty pleas from some 33 people, the latest being Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, lying to Congress over Russian contacts and for campaign finance violations when he made hush-money payments to two women claiming affairs with then candidate Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Attorney Michael Avenatti says:”His choice and time again was to degrade my client, seek to intimidate her, call her and me liars, and seek to degrade the office of the presidency of the United States by seeking to buy effectively an election. This is an outrage. He deserves every day of the 36-month sentence that he will serve. And I will also note with great irony Michael Cohen will report to federal prison exactly one year after we filed the case on behalf of Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen was sentenced today. Donald Trump is next.”
Trump’s former Campaign Chairperson Paul Manafort was in August found guilty of eight criminal counts lodged by Mueller in Federal Court.
The other major development was the midterm elections with Democrats sweeping to a House victory with the likely return of Nancy Pelosi to the Speakership she once held as the first and only woman from 2007 to 2011.
Nancy Pelosi says:”It’s something very very special. And let us just take a moment to dwell on the fact that we are in the majority. And that our ranking members in a matter of weeks will be Madam and Mr. Chair and that is a great thing for the American people. We have been deputized to be a check and balance on the president and the other branches of government and we will do that with dignity.”
The statement could spell bad news for the President who has enjoyed Republican majorities in both the House and Senate during his first two years in office.
Brookings Institution’s Molly Reynolds says:”I do think that most of what we’re going to see out of the House over the next two years is on the oversight front, I tend to agree with bill that even absent what the President said yesterday, we were not heading toward some enormously legislatively productive Congress for the next two years.”
“Democrats in the house see part of their job after its midterm to do is to investigate the President but importantly, not just the president, so we will see things like the ways and means committee trying to obtain Trump’s tax returns, we will see investigations like how many foreign governments are paying money to stay at the Trump hotel – things that are very Trump related.”
“But we will also a lot of oversight and investigative work on other things that have happened in the executive branch over the last two years that have gone unexplored.”
The President’s America First Policy has put him at odds with the country’s closest allies over his imposition of trade tariffs, his unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement while doubling down on his denial of the science on Climate Change that some argue has been directly responsible for the breadth and scope of natural disasters in the country in 2018.
His strong-arm tactics at the southern border also saw migrant children separated from their parents until the Courts ordered the policy stopped.
Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who later fended off sexual assault allegations, split the nation after Dr Chrstine Blasey Ford testified that the nominee assaulted her when they were in high school.
“This whole two week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fuelled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”
Despite the credible accusations levelled, the Senate Confirmed Kavanaugh, handing conservatives a major victory – while the President mocked the testimony of Kavanaugh’s accuser.
Mass gun shootings also continued unabated across the country including at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February that claimed 17 lives and a massacre at a Pittsburgh Synagogue in which 11 people, many elderly, were killed.
And then there was the constant refrain of the President in his war with the media, including the exchange at the White House with a CNN reporter after the midterm elections.
A federal judge later ordered the White House to return the journalist’s credentials after it suspended him over the incident.
2018 also saw the death of veteran Senator John McCain who had a long running feud with the President.
Trump didn’t attend the funeral and also stayed away from the ceremony honouring former first lady Barbara Bush.
But he did attend the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush where he received a frosty reception from his predecessors seated alongside him.
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