By: Donald V. Watkins
© Copyrighted and Published on December 31, 2019
As 2019 comes to a close, it's time to look back at the most important national and international events of the year.
1. President Donald J. Trump became the first American president to publicly call FBI agents "scum." No Republican Party leader scolded Trump for this degrading remark. Trump had previously labeled federal prosecutors as "corrupt" and the U.S. criminal justice system as "rigged."
2. After three years in office, Trump nominated 52 ideologues to the federal bench. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got 50 of these judges confirmed in the U.S. Senate. After eight years in office, only 55 of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees were confirmed. The federal judiciary has reclaimed its 1960s-era COINTELPRO heritage as one of the greatest bastions of white supremacy in America.
3. In December, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump on two articles -- abuse of the Office of President and obstruction of a Congressional inquiry. The Senate trial is scheduled to occur in January 2020.
4. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in March following two crashes that killed 346 passengers and crew members. Boeing has manufactured over 800 737 MAX aircraft which sell for $200 million each. The aircraft is a fatally flawed deathtrap. On December 23rd, Boeing fired CEO Dennis Muilenburg for this colossal engineering and flight safety failure. The board members who oversaw Muilenburg's failed leadership remain in their board seats. To date, no federal or state prosecutor has shown the courage to prosecute Muilenburg and the board members for criminally negligent homicide in connection with the first 737 MAX crash and murder in connection with the second crash. These individuals remain too big to prosecute.
5. Voters in Montgomery, Alabama elected their first African-American mayor in November. His name is Steven Reed. Mayor Reed was also the first black elected as Probate Judge in Montgomery County, Alabama. Reed was born and raised in a Montgomery-based iconic civil rights family. Reed has a demonstrated backbone of steel that places him in a category by himself among the nation's African-American mayors. Reed's election in the "Heart of Dixie" and "Cradle of the Confederacy" made national news headlines. He is the son of Dr. Joe L. Reed, one of the first blacks elected to the Montgomery City Council in 1975.
6. Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded a multi-year criminal investigation into the Trump Campaign's connection to Russian influence peddlers during the 2016 presidential election. No charges were lodged against the President. Trump single-handedly de-balled Mueller with daily tweets that eventually caused Mueller's prosecution team to collapse in disgrace.
7. Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was kicked out of the Trump administration after Trump mocked Sessions' Southern accent, made fun of his inferior Alabama education, and treated Sessions like a bumbling idiot. Sessions, who was the nation's first Senator to endorse Trump's candidacy in 2016, is planning to run for his old Senate seat in 2020.
8. North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un mocked President Trump, called him a "dotard," and made Trump look like an idiot on the world stage by signing a phony denuclearization agreement. Now, Kim Jong Un has resumed long-range missile testing. Meanwhile, Trump gratuitously kissed the North Korean dictator's ass on international television during a poorly planned summit with the Korean strongman.
9. Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, went public in December at a valuation of $1.7 trillion, thereby making it the most valuable company on the planet. While ordinary Americans were shut out of the opportunity to buy Aramco shares, the Trump family enriched itself when a Saudi company in which the family is a partner bought coveted shares on the Trumps' behalf.
10. U.S. Border Patrol agents rounded up a record number of undocumented migrants from Central and South America at the Southern border of the U.S. The roundup was similar in scale to the government's roundup of Hispanic-speaking migrants during "Operation Wetback" in the 1950s.
