Casey Pops Predictions for 2018 : Part 1

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE. Today we're going to dive into the future and sort out the 2018 issues and my predictions for the resolution of these issues. We won't finish until tomorrow, but, let's get started. • • • 1. THE DEMOCRATS WILL BE MUCH WEAKER BY 2018 YEAR-END AND THE GOP WILL RETAIN ITS MAJORITY IN CONGRESS. Democrats are still struggling to convert what they call 'voter enthusiasm' into cash contributions. Tom Perez made funding the DNC and strengthening the Democrat state parties a priority when he was elected chairman in mid-2017. It hasn't happened. Democrats keep talking about winning back control of Congress and building up their state capital presence in the 2018 elections, but they have little cash to finance it. The Democratic National Committee had $6.3 million in the bank on December 1, while the Republican National Committee had $40 million, according to the party filings with the Federal Election Commission. In November, the DNC posted its worst fundraising amount for the month in a decade. • The problem for the DNC is that Americans do not believe their story or support their agenda. And, while they flap around like dying fish and yell "Fire, Fire!!!" about everything Trump says or does, they are just proving that they are, indeed, 'dying fish.' • The Virginia elections last Fall are a good case in point. The ProgDem and mainstream media hoopla was that Trump and the GOP had been trounced in Virginia, signaling a massive move to the Democrat Party for 2018. The MSM signed off on that scenario and it has been almost total radio silence ever since. The truth is that while the Democrats won the governorship, the touted "massive" legislative victory never panned out for the Democrats, but the MSM won't tell you that. As of today, Virginia officials are in a delaying pattern, not ready to declare the winner of a tied race for a seat in the state's House of Delegates. • Got that ?? The "massive" Democrat legislative victory may result in a tied Virginia House of Delegates. AND, Republicans hold a 21-19 advantage in the state Senate, which isn't up for reelection until 2019. • The Democrats are running on tired old Leftist and detested new Progressive ideas. They will not win back the US House Senate in 2018, and I predict that Republicans will add to both their House and Senate majorities in Congress. • • • 2. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WILL CHANGE ITS PROGDEM AGENDA OR DIE IN 2018. TheHill reports that "Overall, Trump has written about the media more than any other topic on Twitter since declaring his candidacy, with 993 tweets critical of the press." According to an analysis by the Columbia Journalism Review : "Over 350 tweets target a news organization, and nearly two-thirds of these tweets were posted during the pre-primary and primary periods. The top targets have been the New York Times, which accounts for more than 20% of these tweets, and CNN, which accounts for more than 15%. Perhaps surprisingly, Fox News is the third-most targeted organization. Its references came in the pre-primary and primary periods, before the network fell in behind Trump after he secured the GOP nomination." • And, a Pew Research Center study found that the media were over three times more negative towards Trump in his first 60 days in office compared to Obama. BUT, despite all the negative media coverage, a Rasmussen poll reveals that President Trump’s approval matches former President Barack Obama in his first year. The Rasmussen poll released on Thursday shows President Trump with a 46% approval rating and a 53% disapproval rating, while Obama had a 47% approval rating and a 52% disapproval rating at the end of his first year. Not much for the ProgDems to crow about there. President Trump cheered the poll, pointing out that he has the similar approval rating at the end of his first year in office despite overwhelmingly negative media coverage, tweeting on December 24 : “The Fake News refuses to talk about how Big and how Strong our BASE is. They show Fake Polls just like they report Fake News. Despite only negative reporting, we are doing well – nobody is going to beat us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” The Pew Research Center found that the media’s coverage of Trump in his first few months in office was 62% negative, while Obama’s coverage was just 20% negative. President Trump received only 5% positive media coverage, compared to Obama's 42% positive media coverage, the most positive media coverage of a President in recent history. • The cable news ratings for November clearly show America's rejection of the Fake and negative news coverage of President Trump. Fake news factory CNN was a distant last place behind second-place MSNBC. As always, Fox News held the top spot. Fox News trounced CNN in every metric, most especially in total viewers. Fox’s average of 1.43 million total day viewers more than doubled CNN’s 690 thousand. During primetime, the humiliation was even worse : Fox’s 2.299 million viewers nearly tripled CNN’s low 855 thousand. MSNBC doubled CNN’s third place primetime viewership (855 thousand) with 1.687 million total viewers. The left-wing networks were far apart in total day viewers, with MSNBC notching 942 thousand, compared to the 690 thousand for last place CNN. In a country of more than 330 million, CNN cannot manage to attract anything close to even one million viewers. CNN has become the Conspiracy Theory Network devoted to bringing down President Trump. During the past year, as it has slipped well behind MSNBC, CNN has devolved into a national joke widely seen by the public as a pompous and self-righteous news outlet constantly out for revenge against a President who dares to call out their lies. Its hatred for Trump and countless Fake news sprees has forced CNN to retract stories and fire staffers. State of the Union, Jake Tapper’s low-rated Sunday show (Tapper pulled in fewer total viewers than a rerun of Fox News Sunday), once seen as the future of CNN, has been struggling in his 4 p.m. slot. Ratings-wise, in total viewers, he regularly loses to Fox News and to -- of all people -- MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace – usually by a large margin. Tapper has even started to slip against Wallace in the 25-54 age-demographic. • We can be sure that President Trump will not ease up on CNN in 2018, setting up a battle for CNN survival in its present format with its present on-screen 'news' team. Look for CNN to radically revise its on-screen stars, perhaps even letting Jake Tapper and Don Lemon go. Anderson Cooper may survive, but only because, although trailing the other networks, he still leads all the CNN on-screen stars in ratings. Because of online conservative news outlets, Americans are no longer tied to CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC for news. Either these mainstream outlets will get back to something that approaches objective, fact-based, news reporting or their ratings will collapse and sponsors will demand drastic changes in both their message and messengers -- 2018 will be a make-or-break year for these traditional news outlets. • • • 3. OBAMACARE WILL BE REPEALED, BUT NOT REPLACED ENBLOC. The fiasco led by Senators John McCain and Susan Collins that resulted in the Senate not being able to repeal Obamacare in 2017 has left Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with the sense that he should move on and let Obamacare die the death of a thousand cuts. President Trump has not positioned himself except to say that Obamacare has been effectively "repealed." That sounds like Trump, too, may be ready to let Obamacare waste away. • That leaves the door open for a battle between the House conservative Freedom Caucus and the Senate's more centrist Republicans to duke it out over Obamacare in Congress. TheHill says : "A debate is raging in the Republican Party over the future of Obamacare, with some urging the party to take another shot at repeal in 2018. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose majority will fall to a single seat in January, has signaled he intends to move on from legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act and instead look for bills that can pass with bipartisan support. 'Well, we obviously were unable to completely repeal and replace with a 52-48 Senate,' McConnell told NPR. 'We'll have to take a look at what that looks like with a 51-49 Senate. But I think we'll probably move on to other issues.' " McConnell's position is not being received well by GOP conservatives, who say the party shouldn’t turn its back on a long-standing campaign pledge. Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, says : "Repealing ObamaCare is absolutely necessary for the conservative base.” As congressional Republicans decide what major legislation to tackle next year, it “needs to be ObamaCare,” Holler said. • The sticking point for McConnell is that 2018 is an election year, and the GOP base is still looking for the Repeal-and-Replace that the Republicans promised as far back as 2010. Like McConnell, Speaker Paul Ryan has made it clear that he’s ready to tackle other legislative priorities in 2018, but recently told the Weekly Standard : “I don’t think the health care issue is done.” Ryan indicated a willingness to return to Obamacare as soon as January : “At the end of the day, we’ve got to go after the root cause -- health care inflation and entitlements. Welfare reform is going to be our next lift.” • Representative Mark Walker, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he hopes Republicans can get both entitlement reform and Obamacare repeal done in 2018. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has co-authored an Obamacare repeal bill with Senator Bill Cassidy, another Republican, said last week that he's committed to pushing his legislation in 2018 : “To those who believe -- including Senate Republican leadership -- that in 2018 there will not be another effort to Repeal and Replace Obamacare -- well you are sadly mistaken.” • In the book "Understanding Trump" by Newt Gingrich, Newt addresses health care and makes what I think is a vitally important point. Gingrich says that past efforts at repealing and replacing Obamacare have focused on efforts to re-construct health care financing and insurance. Gingrich says that what Congress should be doing is looking at health care with an eye to reforming health care itself -- providing what Americans expect from their health care system in terms of care, access to doctors and hospitals, and technological advancement. Newt also advises that a "comprehensive" bill will fail because it will not be easy to explain to American consumers of health care services and so will not get enough votes to pass. He recommends taking on the key issues one at a time in separate pieces of legislation. • I predict that, unfortunately, McConnell and Ryan will not take Newt Gingrich's advice. They will tackle social program reform and infrastructure areas needing congressional attention, but they will not heed the demands of conservative House members to take another look at what can be done to Repeal-and-Replace Obamacare. But, I also predict that Obamacare will take another hit before the end of 2018. The House -- as it has done many times in the past several years -- will produce a bill and send it to the Senate. And, yes, the Senate will stumble again, and pass repeals of parts of Obamacare without full repeal or any successes at replacement. • • • 4. TRUMP WILL GET A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH ON THE RUSSIA DOSSIER FROM MUELLER. President Trump on Saturday lashed out at the deputy FBI director on Twitter, accusing Andrew McCabe of botching the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server amid reports that McCabe is considering retiring from the FBI in March : "How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?" The President was asking an important question. It had been preceded by his December 26 tweets about the FBI and the Clinton campaign vis-à-vis the Russia Dossier compiled against him and his 2016 campaign. Trump tweeted : "WOW, @foxandfriends 'Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.' And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!" • Trump was, of course, talking about the Russia Dossier, a compilation of political opposition research against the 2016 Trump campaign partly funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It included several incendiary, salacious claims against Trump and his campaign that have hung over his presidency. The Democrat opposition research for the Dossier was originally aimed at finding information on the entire field of GOP candidates, but its alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow eventually became the focus of the Dossier after Trump was nominated as the GOP candidate for President. • It has taken 18 months to get Congress activated, but now Chairman Devin Nunes and the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have interviewed witnesses in connection with the Russia Dossier, leading them to begin to probe into the FBI's and Justice Department's handling of the claims included in the Dossier, many of whose controversial and salacious claims that have not been verified. The Justice Department allowed the House Intelligence Committee in December to interview Andrew McCabe, the FBI Deputy Director thought to be an informant to the Dossier's leading researcher. Trump attorneys are also calling for a second special counsel to investigate links between the FBI and Fusion GPS, the private company that commissioned the dossier research. The Intelligence Committee has attempted to slap contempt citations on the DOJ and FBI for its investigation into claims of Russian collusion in the Dossier. • There must be a leader for every fight in Congress. For the Russia Dossier, Devin Nunes has emerged as the President's ally, going after the opposition research Dossier and its creators and users with a frontal attack. The Washington Post opposes Trump on just about every issue, and it has been solidly behind special counsel Mueller and pushing to shut down every Republican attempt at a pushback. The WP sees Nunes' loyal defense of the President as raising "alarm among Democrats that the future of the investigation may be clipped short or otherwise undermined. Even some of Nunes’s GOP allies have expressed concern about his tactics, prompting rare public warnings that he should temper his attacks on federal law enforcement." However, the WP doesn't name even one "concerned" GOP ally. • The Washington Post is worried because last month "Nunes began threatening contempt citations for FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the wake of revelations that former Mueller team members had exchanged anti-Trump texts." Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said at the time : “I’m interested in getting access to the information and not the drama.” But, with the cascade of Democrat sleaze -- Sprzok anti-Trump emails, lists of donations by Mueller staff to Hillary's political campaign, and the revelation of what may be corrupt practices related to McCabe's wife taking money from Terry McAuliffe for her own campaign while her husband was investigating McAuliffe's close friend, Hillary -- Republican lawmakers and Fox News have questioned the integrity of the FBI, the DOJ and special counsel Robert Mueller. The Russia probe is in trouble. The GOP majority in Congress are beginning to demand answers. • While the House Intelligence Committee continues its investigation, Gowdy's House Committee on Oversight and the House Judiciary Committee have already launched an inquiry into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe. And a joint investigation by Nunes and Gowdy into the Justice Department and FBI’s review of circumstances surrounding an Obama-era deal giving Russia a stake in the American uranium market -- the Uranium One deal that smacks of corruption by the Clinton Foundation and Hillary while Secretary of State -- is revving up. Nunes' Committee is also investigating Fusion GPS, the firm behind the Russia Dossier. Nunes’s subpoena of the firm’s bank records has started a court battle, and the chairman’s staff is in touch with the office of Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Juiciary Committee, according to Grassley, who is also looking into reports that the Clinton campaign and the Democrat Party paid for research that ended up in the Dossier and led to the FISA court-approved surveillance of Trump and his team for political purposes. Nunes recently told Fox News : “We have no evidence of Russia collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia." • Last Wednesday, the Washington Times ran a story about the probe, titled “Democrats’ case for Trump-Russia grand conspiracy crumbles with lack of evidence.” • There is No Evidence. And, my prediction is that sometime in 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller will have to admit that and close his file on President Trump or face a hostile Republican Congress eager to strip him of his title and job and begin a serious investigation of his own alleged corrupt practices related to Uranium One and the Russia Dossier. • • • 5. HILLARY AND THE DNC WILL BE UNDER MULTIPLE FBI / DOJ INVESTIGATIONS. • Truth Revolt published an article last week about the State Department release of Huma Abedin emails found on her husband Anthony Weiner's laptop. Truth Revolt wrote : "Yet another really grave national security crime that Mr. Comey apparently thinks is no big deal....If you want to bury something, the perfect time to release it is Friday evening of the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Case in point: the State Department has released the e-mails Huma Abedin had on husband Anthony Weiner's computer. CNN reports that many of them were classified as "confidential" and thus are heavily redacted, but have been released after Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for "All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-'state.gov' email address." • Then-FBI Director James Comey testified earlier this year that there was no indication that Abedin "had a sense that what she was doing was in violation of the law." Judicial Watch disagreed : "This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. We have been following this case closely because from our past experience we know that Abedin's emails include classified and other sensitive materials. The document are still being posted, but our team has seen enough to confirm that classified information from Hillary Clinton's email server has been found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner....The fact that classified information has been found from Clinton and Abedin on Weiner's laptop shows the urgent need for a criminal investigation by the Justice Department." • Huma Abedin, wrote JW : "was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff. Weiner is a disgraced former congressman and New York mayoral candidate who pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor. Abedin kept a non-State.gov email account that she used repeatedly for government business on Hillary Clinton's notorious email server(s). We previously released 20 productions of documents in this case that show examples of mishandling classified information and instances of pay to play between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Also, at least 627 emails were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradict a statement by Clinton that, "as far as she knew," all of her government emails had been turned over to department." • Judicial Watch has taken the position all along that : "Perhaps Clinton and Abedin were expecting all of this to just go away with Clinton's election to the White House last year. Let's hope the Justice Department finally gets it act together and proves that bet wrong." • We should add to these glaring cover-ups of Hillary Clinton's massive mishandling of classified documents -- a criminal offense, if proven -- the fact that the FBI and DOJ charged to investigate Hillary's email scandal are themselves supporters of Hillary Clinton and anti-Trump Deep State bureaucrats. • LifeZette published an article on December 30 outlining the political contributions made by DOJ employees to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Lifezette revealed : "More than 2,600 individual contributions collectively worth in excess of $416,000 were made to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by persons who listed the Department of Justice (DOJ) as their employer....Contributions to President Donald Trump were paltry by comparison, coming from only 61 individuals listing DOJ as their employer and making 54 donations collectively worth $20,252. All of the data covered the election cycle from January 1, 2015, through the 2016 election on November 8. Forty-one of the Clinton donors gave the maximum allowable amount of $2,700 for the general election. None of the Trump donors gave the maximum amount; the largest single amount he received was $1,000." • LifeZette writes : "The yawning gulf between donors to the Democratic and Republican presidential contenders provides additional context to the increasingly intense allegations by Republicans in Congress and attorneys representing Trump that partisan bias among DOJ employees, including high officials of the FBI, compromises sensitive investigations related to the 2016 campaign. Most notable among those probes is that of special counsel Robert Mueller concerning allegations of collusion between agents of the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Other related investigations include the FBI’s probe under former Director James Comey into Clinton’s use of a private server and email system to conduct official business as Secretary of State." And, the DOJ Inspector General is conducting a review of the FBI investigation -- under Comey -- into former Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton email servers. • The data about political contributions may also add weight to Representative Devin Nunes and his House Intelligance Committee's questions about FBI and DOJ stonewalling of his requests for documents simply because they are engaged in a cover-up. Nunes blistered DOJ and FBI officials last Thursday for their refusal to give the Committee hundreds of documents it requested on August 24. Nunes wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, saying : “Several weeks ago DOJ informed the committee that the basic investigatory documents demanded by the subpoenas FBI Form FD-302 interview summaries did not exist. However, shortly after my meeting with you in early December, DOJ subsequently located and produced numerous FD-302s pertaining to the Steele dossier, thereby rendering the initial response disingenuous at best. As it turns out, not only did documents exist that were directly responsive to the committee’s subpoenas, but they involved senior DOJ and FBI officials who were swiftly reassigned when their roles in matters under the committee’s investigation were brought to light. As a result of the numerous delays and discrepancies that have hampered the process of subpoena compliance, the committee no longer credits the representations made by DOJ and/or the FBI regarding these matters." • SLAM DUNK. The Steele Dossier was compiled by the Fusion GPS opposition research firm with the assistance of Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. The Dossier relied on material supplied to Steele by sources linked to the Russian government and contained multiple allegations of sexual improprieties by Trump during a business trip to that country. The Dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee, using a law firm as a cutout to conceal the actual source of the funding. The wife of a senior DOJ official worked on the Dossier while employed by Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign. • In his letter to Reosenstein, Nunes directed the DOJ and FBI to produce the documents requested months ago no later than January 3, 2018, and instructed Rosenstein to provide a written explanation over his signature to justify any further withholdings. Nunes also demanded dates on which six top DOJ and FBI officials will be made available to the committee for interviews. All six of the officials to be interviewed have been linked in some fashion to either the Dossier, crude expressions of disgust with Trump, a mysterious “insurance plan” apparently intended to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election, or Comey’s controversial July 2016 statement absolving Clinton of wrongdoing in connection with the email scandal. Nunes spelled it out in plain language : “Unfortunately, the FBI’s intransigence with respect to the August 24 subpoenas is part of a broader pattern of behavior that can no longer be tolerated,” Nunes told Rosenstein. At this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigated themselves.” • I predict that in 2018, Nunes and Grassley will lead the congressional investigation of the FBI and DOJ to issue subpoenas and they will take a hostile position with the agencies that are deep in cover-up of Hillary Clinton's email illegalities and the Clinton Foundation's pay-for-play relating to the Uranium One deal while Hillary was Secretary of State. Not only will Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation be under formal investigations, but the FBI and DOJ Deep Staters who allegedly engaged in the cover-up of the Clinton's acts will also be under formal investigation. All these investigations will be placed under the control of a special counsel because Congress will heed Nunes and Grassley's advice that the agencies themselves cannot be trusted to be objective in these matters. • Tomorrow, we will finish the predictions for 2018.