sunday. welcome to this special edition of "the journal editorial report" as we look back on the highs and lows of president trump's second year in office. i'm paul gigot. from the contentious confirmation of his second supreme court justice, to a trade war with china, that is set to continue into the new year, hered with a look at the administration's accomplishments and setbacks in 2018, columnist and deputy editor, kimberly strassel and editorial page writer, kate batchholder o'dell. let's start with what do you think were the big hits, big accomplishments for donald trump his second year. >> i guess the biggest one would

have been getting brett kavanaugh confirmed to the supreme court. i mean, you know, in retrospect one almost forgets the extraordinary battle that took place over the kavanaugh confirmation. including clarence thomas. i don't think we have ever seen anything like it and the divisions created and the closes closeness of the vote, lindsey graham's oration at the end. the president stuck with him through the end and he got it through. i think kavanaugh nomination those be the highlight of this year. >> paul: marianne, talk about economic growth. we had the first year since 2005 where we would be above be 3% gdp growth and wage growth going at above 3% too for the first time in a long time. >> i think the president makes a little bit of a mistake when he tries to connect it to the stock market which i think he has less control over. but for sure, he gets a lot of

credit for the strong economy. not just the tax reform but also the general sense that he gives business that he's going to take his foot off the neck of businessmen p which the obama administration was always very hostile towards business. >> paul: and deregulation, that was a big part of it. >> deregulation also. unfortunately, i think he's damaged himself quite a bit because of his trade agenda. i think that's caused more uncertainty in the economy, that is going to continue to -- >> paul: slowed down investment in the second half. >> people are worried about it. if it becomes a standoff between the president and china, that could take a while to heal and we still don't know what's going to happen with nafta 2.0 because it's not ratified yet and there are problems with it. >> paul: what about the setbacks, you have any - you put at the top of the list? we took all the easy, good stuff. you get the downside. >> well, paul, i think the trade war would be the chief among

them. but i think also his recent decision to pull troops out of syria rather abruptly which seems to have cost him the defense secretary. i think that has to counted among the top setbacks of the year. the one other would be how little congress really accomplished in its last chance for republican policy for several years now. >> paul: well, wait a minute. didn't they do the budget deal with the two year budget deal that got defense spending up, which you fought for very hard as i recall in our council and i think rightly so. the cost was a lot of domestic spending but they got a lot more military spending. >> they did, paul. it's a two year bump. it's not anything off the 3% of gdp that's now the norm. also, i think if it doesn't continue through the next budget caps deal with democrats running congress narks it will end up being pretty modest in what it will buy and sus dane fo sustaie

military. >> paul: kim, you can tell us what you -- is there any downside you see here or upside, either? >> well, we're living one of the downsides right now. the failure to get an immigration deal earlier this year and that was a particular pit at thiy because the potentis right there. you had democrats that wanted a deal for the dreamers, a daca deal. you had a president that wanted more border security. he didn't manage to rally his caucus around it. now here we are at the end of the year, dealing with a standoff over $5 billion in border wall funding and a government shutdown. >> paul: it seems to me -- i followed that decision very closely inside the white house in reporting, kim, as i know you did. it seems that the white house thought they could use the immigration issue in the campaign, in the election, that it would be a winner for them. they ended up losing 40 seats. didn't sound like a great winner. so the they gave up potential

victory. >> it was a bad call. we found that that issue did resonate with some voters. it just happened to resonate with all of those suburban voters that ended up electing democrats to the house and giving nancy pelosi the speakership again. >> paul: mary, have we reached with democrats taking over the house, which is kind of the -- maybe the conservative high water policy mark of the trump presidency? >> there's two ways to think about it. on the one hand, the president might want to reach out to nancy pelosi because he wants to get things done and they do have some common interests. let's remember that democrats eare traditionally very protectionist. so i think one of the worrying things is that on trade, yeah, and so one of the worrying things is what if the president atcides to move closer to the traditional democratic position on trade, try to satisfy the democrats in order to get nafta

approved. that wouldnd be i think a bad me for the u.s. economy but it might help him get things done. >> i think one thing we should cite on the upside is people talk all the time about the swap in washington, -- the swamp in washington. that includes the bureaucracies. for the past year, a lot of president trump's appointees across the bureaucracies have continued to enact deregulation -- deregulatory activities, some of which are in progress, some of which they've accomplished. hhs, they removed religious institutions from many of the contraceptive mandates in obamacare, they made possible associated health care plans, which is a big deal. they limited the habitat, a way to stop oil drilling, this will permit more oil drilling. they rationalized the water act which would impose the clean waters act on a lot of small bodies of water. that has eliminated.

this good work continues to go on by the president's appointees. >> paul: i would add the education secretary has basically withdrawn the guidance which allowed the kangaroo courts on sexual assault accusations to take place on college campuses. >> one thing we learned from .betsy devos is how much of the education department was operating under guidance which isn't even a regulation, let alone a statutory authority. she repealed that guidance. she also may repeal a guidance m school discipline that also was having destructive consequences in making schools to focus more on political goals than disbeeline that actually works to -- discipline that actually works to change behavior. i think we're seeing the repealo of those guidances and subregulatory advice pieces get taken off the books as well. >> paul: that really comes under theff media radar which is focud so much on the mueller probe and

such. president trump payinge a surprise visit to u.s. troops in iraq amid criticism for his decision to withdraw from syria. the continuin turmoil in the mi, threats from china and north korea. we take a look back at the foreign policy flash points of 2018 and what to expect in the year ahead. this is not a bed. it's a revolution in sleep. the new sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now during our lowest prices of the season. it senses your movement, and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. it can even warm your feet to help you fall asleep faster. so you wake up ready to make your resolutions, reality. and now, the queen sleep number 360 c4 smart bed is only $1299. ranked #1 in customer satisfaction with mattresses by j.d. power.

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the other reason i'm here today is to personally thank you

and every service member throughout this region for the near elimination of the isis territorial in iraq and in syria. two years ago when i became president, they were a very dominant group. they were very dominant. today, they're not so dominant anymore. >> paul: president trump wednesday addressing u.s. troops during his surprise visit to iraq. the president touting his administration's gains against isis during his first two years in office, in the face of widespread criticism for his surprise decision to withdraw american forces from syria, that announcement capping off a tumultuous year in foreign policy. jack keane is a fox news senior strategic analyst and sometimes contributor to the wall street journal. general keane, thanks for being here. so you have -- we've had a week

now since the announcement of the withdrawal from syria and general mattis' resignation. what's the fallout so far? >> well, i think it's a fairly serious setback and i' impulsive decision by the president, i think a process foul in a sense because there was never any meeting on this subject to vet the risks associated with it, not just the operational risk but also the political liability, the relationship with our allies, none of that was done. it was sort of an ad hoc meeting around the president's desk and a decision was made. it's really unfortunate. i hope they learn from this and put in play the normal interagency process to make decisions like this. clearly isis in our judgment at the institute for the study of war we believe strongly that isis will reemerge, they will rebuild and they will actually have the capacity to retake territory again given the vac

kuehl that exists. iran -- vacuum that exists. iran will own all of syria now, achieving a major strategic victory, being able to establish from iran, through iraq, to syria, to lebanon, to the mediterranean, something they've been after for over 35 years, and now they've got it. >> paul: what does the president need to do here to essentially kind of do damage control in a sense, i think you're talking about and i particularly think the messag mess that -- messaged veer rarelies might take from his decision is one of retreat and weakness. they may try to exploit that how does the president counter-balance that? >> well, it's really unfortunate. cane are some things that be done here, clearly. before the khashoggi affair, the administration was stitching together an arab nato.

we've got to get back to doing this work. it is critical work. the major threat in the middle east is not radical islam which clearly is a problem, it's a breeding ground for it toea be sure and isis is certainly an issue, but the major geopolitical issue are iran's significant strategic goals to dominate and control the region at the expense of israel. we have got to get back to the business of doing that. >> paul: do you think the president's right this week to say we're going to keep our 5200 troops in iraq, pulling out of syria but at least he says for now he's going to keep those in iraq. is that important? >> yes, it's critical. particularly given the syria decision where we're going to pull out. i hope that the syria decision gets somewhat revisited. i don't think the president will reverse his decision. but i do think we can phase the withdrawal and we have some good reason to stay longer because the saudis knowing that the president made a decision to pull out have anteed up the

money to do reconstruction in the northeast and syria. if we're going to do reconstruction, build the schools, bridges, electric power plants, et cetera, if we're going to do that, we have to do that in a secure environment. so we could keep forces there a little bit longer to see that through and t that would add to the stability of the region rather significantly. >> paul: let's turn to the far east, asia an and north korea in particular, where the president started a dialogue with the north korean regime and kim jong un. we haven't made a lot of progress since that summit in singapore. what's the challenge ahead for the president in north korea? >> we're clearly stalemated here. there's been progress on the tangential side of it. the south koreans and north koreans are talking, reconnecting families, trying to reconnect a rail line, they returned some remains, they returned hostages. but the major issue, paul, the significant issue itself, they have not given us a list or

inventory of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and chemical biological capability. there's not been one single weapon disarmed or destroyed. we have not made any major progress on the core issue. the only thing we have to do here, and it's much harder now because missiles aren't flying over japan or heading towards guam like they were, there is no sense of crisis but we've got to double down on sanctions and police it up and also i think, if i was advising the president, i would bring in some military capacity to the region to let them though that this military option has not gone away and we're serious about it. you are either going to give us those nuclear weapons or we're going to take them from you. and that has got -- we've got to get back inside kim jong un's head about that. >> paul: does the administration face a relatively early decision here about whether to actually -- to say look, you've got to turn over the list of your sites and nuclear related sites and if

you don't, this process has got to stop, there's going to be no summit and we're going to go back to the tensions, is that an early decision they have to make? >> that's a decision that's clearly coming in the next four to six months. if they don't produce the inventory list and some kind of time schedule and the fact that we have independent inspectors to verify the disarmament of the weapons systems, if none of that materializes, clearly we are done. there's not going to be any progress in denon. denucleariza. it will tell us that kim jong un has been gaming us as he did with previous administration. >> paul: are you seeing with the syria decision, maybe with the drawdown in afghanistan, that president muted half of the troops there, are we seeing the emergence of a kind of steve bannon, rand paul isolationist

version of donald trump foreign policy here for the next two years? that is what you think we may be seeing? >> i find it very disturbing. i'm hoping it's not the case but clearly the number one isolationist in the united states government is senator rand paul and he supports this decision wholeheartedly. he thinks it's clearly the best decision the president has made maybe in a generation. i don't see how the united states can pull back from the global responsibility to be the world's leader, stitch together the alliances that we need to have to stand up against this aggressive behavior from russia, from china, from north korea, from iran. the only thing the united states -- only the united states can do that. we have got to do that. to pull back, to suggest we're going to disengage, that's obama's policy. that's what got us in the trouble that we've been in for so manyo years. i'm hoping that's not the case. >> paul: general keane, thank s you for being here. we'll watch that very closely. when we come back, as paul ryan

retires from the house, a look back at his tenure as speaker as well as the successes and failures of the 115th congress. if you have psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats moderate to severe plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla,75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression

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we have taken on some of the biggest challenges of our time and we have made a great and lasting difference in the trajectory of this country.

we began a historic rebuilding of our military and our national defense, record regulatory reform to help small businesses, toa long sought expansion of domestic energy production to be followed by america's new energy dominance and after years of doubt, years of the si people st could not be done, we achieved the first major overhaul of the tax code in 31 years. >> paul: that was paul ryan delivering his farewell address. he spent the last three years in congress as speaker of the house. our panel back with a look at the ryan legacy as well as successes and failures of the 115th congress. mitch mcconnell said this is the best congress for conservative reform in his lifetime, do agree with that? >> i do agree with that even he though there were disappointments along the way,

including the failure to repeal obamacare. i think tax reform was paul ryan's legacy. that's why he came to town and wanted to run weighs and means. tax reform made the code more competitive on the a corporate side and so on. so i think that has to be considered pretty much the highlight of congress. so there are several others that don't get as much attention like scaling back dodd-frank regulations on community banks, like the recent criminal justice reform package, in the senate, the judiciary revamp. i think there is a lot to point to on conservative accomplishments. >> paul: kim, how doin you see this congress? >> i absolutely agree with mitch mcconnell and all of the things that kate just mentioned. and the speaker touched on it briefly, don't forget congress' role which was monumentally important in rolling back a number of those big last minute obama regulations and their tool for that was something called

the congressional recre review . they used it more than a dozen times. to the extent that our federal register is smaller these days, the list of pages of regulation, congress had a huge part in that as well too. to me, that i has probably beens single an effective action aspef the revival we're seeing. >> paul: the failure to repeat and replace obamacare, they did get the mandate repealed, but that's not that large and the failure on entitlement reform they had a chance to do something about medicaid, reduce the cost going forward and they failed. >> yeah, the entitlement reform is a big one because medicare and social security spending are not going away. the president obsessed with trade deficits. we've got a spending deficit in

the united states, entitlements are the reason. the two big political failures were health care and indeed not doing a deal on immigration and thee dreamers in the middle of the year which would have gotten the president about $24 billion for that wall. both of those issues fed into the midterm elections, especially health care, which hurt a lot of republicans running out there. so that was part of the things that did not get done. but i just want to say very quickly, paul, that tax bill, as mr. ryan said, the biggest in 31 years, those are such a heavy lift, getting the u.s. corporate rate down to 21% and the result that we've seen in the uplift in the american economy has just got to be a stellar part of his legacy. >> paul: broke the log jam in the corporate rate, 35%, the highest in the developed world, that will be a legacy i think democrats will have a hard time overturning. they'll want to raise the rates. it won't be as easy as they

think. >> it's affected business investment and explains the pickup in the economy this year. i think when i look at it, i think paul ryan was the right person at the right time because he's very wonky. he knows all the stuff inside and out. the other day i watched his opening speech for the 115th congress and it was remarkable how consistent sil cocillatory . i think he had a real skill in herding the cats. i think he gets a lot of credit for having gotten the tax reform done. >> paul: a lot of president trump supporters won't like to hear this. i'm going to say it anyway. i think many of president trump's most important accomplishments, tax reform, deregulation, the military spending bill, judges, those are the traditional conservative republican agenda. when you look at the things that were supposed to be the popul.

ace trump agenda, those are either failures or at best they're a work in progress. i think you've gotmi to -- trums going to a miss paul ryan a lot when he has to face nancy pelosi across the table. >> i think to mary's point about the right person at the right time, paul ryan spent years kind of pulling together a binder of ideas that it was really detailed, called his better way plan. you look through it and of course he didn't accomplish everything. i think in particular on anti-poverty programs, i think paul ryan would have liked to do more to make those promote work eand advancement more than they do now. a lot of it, like tax reform and you see he was able to accomplish a lot of that and it's easy to forget that when the better way document came out, it was glibly dismissed as outdated or impossible to pass or just fantasy. now we see a lot of it as law. >> paul: what about the criticism of paul ryan from the left, that he wasn't critical enough of donald trump on a

matter of personal behavior and statements? is that a fair rap in your view? >> no, it's not fair. because, look, whether or not they agree on everything, donald trump and paul ryan belong to the same party one of paul ryan's jobs, especially because the president wasn't necessarily going to do it, was to make sure the relationship endured for the benefit of these policies that we're talking about and these legislative victories. so look, paul ryan -- by the way, he did call out the president especially on things that he thought were very serious and which the president was going in the wrong direction on, issues of trade, on issues of foreign policy. so he marked out some places where he had his distinctions and differences. but his overall goal was to make sure that things continued to work and to your point, to the extent that congress actually passed things, they were more of the ryan mold in the traditional

conservative mold. it wasn't as if you saw the congress bending over passing a lot y of populac trump-driven agenda. >> paul: still ahead, wall street's wild ride continues. is the market volatility a warning of what's to come in in 2019? - [voiceover] this is an urgent message from the international fellowship of christians and jews. there is an emergency food crisis for elderly holocaust survivors in the former soviet union.

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>> paul: the u.s. economy continuing to show signs of strength in 2018 with gdp growth projected to top 3% for the year. amid stock market volatility and continuing concerns over a trade war with china, what should we expect in the new year? let's ask senior economic advisor to the 2016 trump campaign and co-author of a new book, trumpanomi cs let's look at the stock market volatility, up and down hundreds of points, sometimes in the same day. what do you make of it? >> i think it's the result of a couple factors. one is the trade war with china which is a very uncertain future. i think at this point china has, what, 60 days or so to come up with some concessions. i think trump is fighting the right fight here. i think china is increasingly a big problem in the international economic scene and we've been involved in an abusive relationship. i think one thing that ambassadors haven't been maybe taking total account of is if

trump can pull something off in 2018 -- in 2019, where they get a trade deal, that could lower tariffs, i think you would see a boom in the stock market, a jupe jubilation by investors. i think the fed made two big errors in the last three or four months in terms of raising interest rates at a time when we have basically full employment, no inflation, wage gains. everything was going great with the economy. why didoi the fed have to mess this up? >> paul: let me interrupt here. >> okay. >> paul: you've got the president, is that helping, even if he's right on the federal reserve with his criticism which you clearly think he is, is he helping investors and confidence by bashing the chairman of the fed, jay powell, in personal terms? >> well, it doesn't have to be personal. i think he's absolutely right to say, look, we passed pro-growth tax reform, pro-growth regulation, we got the economy in its healthiest shape we've

had in 20 years and the fed comes in with rate increases and have actually in my opinion caused deflation. you asked me what are the problems in 2019, i'm worried about the effect of the interest rate hikes. i think the president is absolutely-it's proper for him to say why is the fed doing this. whether he could fire the fed chairman, i think that's probably been taken off the table. i think the fed should reverse some of these policy mistakes. >> paul: when you talk about maybe -- i regret my decision to hire powell, to do so a public fashion, a lot of people say i don't know what's going to happen. they influenced alan greenspan by having dinner and doing it behind the scenes. i don't know that this public -- i think in some ways, you may disagree, if you do say so, but i think the public beating up on jay powell before the recent fed

meeting made it harder for powell not to raise rates. >> if you're right about that, and you may be, how responsible is that that the fed wreck the economy to establish its independence. >> paul: i don't think they're trying to wreck the economy. >> i don't think there was any case whatsoever for the latest rate increase. the market has spoken. it was a major mistake. and look, as i said, the economy -- show me where the inflation is in the economy. you and i i think both believe, the major role of the fed is to keep prices stable. they haven't done that. of the 34 major commodities, 27 of them have been falling in price. look at oil, look at copper, soybeans, steel, lead, when you have falling prices like that, you and i know that falling prices can be as big of a problem for the economy as when we have big inflation. >> paul: some of that is because of slowing global demand. >> i don't know about that. maybe. >> paul: there's no question the global economy is slowing.

all right. i want to ask q you, how strongs the u.s. economy right now? the american economy right now. because we're going to have 3% growth, first time above 3% since 2005. but if you look at the fourth quarter, it seems to be decelerating. how much is it decelebrating? >> first of all, let's celebrate this amazing 2018 economy. i wrote a column called 2018, the year of the worker, it really was. investors did poorly this year but boy, did workers do better. b fact, we've got the best job market maybe in 50 years for workers. we've got the lowest unemployment rate for blacks and hispanics and all workers in something like 50 years. we finally got the wage gains we've been looking for. that's one of the problems with the fed and why trump is so frustrated. we got wage gains for the first time in 20 years and the fed wants to pull those back. for workers it's been a good year. in 2019 i think it really depends so much on whether trump can pull out this trade deal del

with china. >> paul: as you talk to your soressources in the white houses the president decided he wants a deal? >> he's confident. i spokele with him. he seems confident that china will come to the table. who knows what beijing will do with that regime. their stock market is down 30% this year. they've been hurt by the e.tariffs. trump believes that the leverage he is gaining from the tariffs -- i'm a free trade guy. he believes this will bring china to the table and he thinks he'll get a call from president xi sometime when we get near the deadline and xi says let's make a deal. that would be the best for the united states, for china, for the rest of the world economy. >> paul: it sounds as if that call doesn't come or if he can't get a deal, we could have a much worse 2019. is that fair to say? >> i think so.

i don't see trump backing off on that 25% tariffs that he threatened. that would cause a global trade war. so the stakes are -- i'm not discounting this. the stakes are really high here. >> paul: thanks a lot. still ahead, the mueller probe now well into the second year pat is the special counsel any closer to proving collusion with the trump campaign and russia and are congressional investigations about to heat up? p building a better bank starts with looking at something old, and saying, "really?" so capital one is building something completely new. capital one cafes. inviting places with people here to help you, not sell you. and savings and checking accounts with no fees or minimums. because that's how it should be. you can open one from right here or anywhere in 5 minutes. seriously, 5 minutes... this is banking reimagined. what's in your wallet?

>> paul: it's the story that dogged president trump throughout this first two years in office, charges of collusion between his campaign and the russians. so with investigations likely to heat up in the new democratic controlled congress and with special counsel robert mueller sprawling probe set to continue in the new year, what have we learned so far about the trump, russia connection. kim, let's first just focus on the russia collusion, the trump, putin conspiracy, alleged, to defeat hillary clinton. if we learned any more factual basis to prove or disprove that allegation? >> absolutely nothing. at least nothing that has been made public by the special counsel's office. we've learned that there were

some russian efforts to try to influence the election. there's been indictments against some russian individuals. troll farms, people who did minor efforts, playing around with social media but to the core question of whether or not the trump campaign was in any way communicating with the russians in an active effort to try to swing the election one way or another, there still remains no public evidence of that. >> paul: mary, anything to add on that, in the sense we've got the trump tower meeting with don junior, kushner and the russians, we have the steele dossier and yet none of that has been corroborated. >> i think the reason why this sort of continues to spin is because donald trump had interests in russia prior to becoming a candidate and even during his candidacy there was conversations between people who represented him and the russian government. so then you have donald trump getting elected and he almost has thiss kind of knee-jerk need

to show that nobody can push him around. so he keeps saying things like my friend vladimir and so forth and trying to show kind of a camaraderie with vladimir putin, that hasn't helped him. in terms of actual evidence, i agree with kim. but i also think that he could have done more to draw a very straight line in the sand, to show that he is not i any way -- >> paul: those meetings have been corroborated, those facts did happen, they exist, the steeleel dossier exists. what i mean is to say they haven't gone anywhere in proving -- >> that's right. >> we should add as a food note, the trump administration, the treasury department has continued to impose significant economic sanctions on russians and cronies around vladimir putin that are driving the russians crazy. the sanctions are biting. >> paul: we did have a couple of

big convictions this year, paul manafort, former campaign manager for the president, michael cohen, his former lawyer in private life and an indictment -- he's pled guilty and the implication from the new york attorney's office, u.s. attorney in new york, is that trump -- donald trump was aware of those campaign finance payments, they call them, and it may be a campaign finance violation by thehe president. what else have we learned? >> well, paul, not much. what you're describing is that we basically learned that donald trump associated with some very unsaunsavory characters. none of that is involved in what kim was describing as the central question, whether trump was working with rush slay sha -- russia to influence a in-- in

election. it doesn't reflect welln on donald. trump's judgment. that's a far cry from what it's being presented as, as collusion. >> paul: let's take a look at the other side of this, which is what we learned about what the fbi was doing in the 2016 campaign, investigating officials associated with the trump campaign. in many i ways, those are some f the biggest revelations of the year. >> we were talking earlier about congress' accomplishments. i should say this is one of the huge ones, the investigators in both the house and the senate in particular devin nunes and the work they did to uncover what the fbi was doing in 2016 and what we now know is that the ton campaign and -- clinton campaign and the democratic national committee obtained the services of an opposition research firm that was behind the dossier and they shopped it to the fbi and the fbi seemed to have used it

as just at thi justification ton an investigation into the rival campaign. that statement should be shocking to every american. >> paul: well, where does it go? where do those facts go? are there going to be any political or legal implications for anybody at the fbi? >> look, i think we're going to have to wait until there's actually some phi announce -- final announcements. that's dependent on donald trump declassifying some of this information. i think the question too of whether or not leadership at the department of justice is willing to do a thorough internal investigation and also be transparent with the public. we've got an expecter general who is doing some work. at that point, the question becomes what crimes were committed, were there crimes committed. the biggest one seems to be leaking. that is a felony. if there are people caught to have been doing that. but other than that, it's a question i think of simply

holding public officials accountable for their actions and for that we first need to know what they did in entireity. >> paul: dan, we don't have a lot of time. what's the biggest risk in 2019 for donald trump from the mueller probe. he's going to have the report to the justice department, almost certainly will leak. is it that congress will use it to impeach him? >> certainly, it's that congress will use it to impeach him. the biggest risk is that mueller does come up with a legal charge against him. and i just hope, paul, that i robert mueller understands that a lot of american institutions have been damaged here including theng fbi. what we want from mueller is a full and fair accounting of what has happened, what are the results of the investigation, rather than over-reaching to come up with a secondary legal charge against the president of the united states. >> paul: dan, i hope you're right. when we come back, our hits and misses of the year. year.

>> paul: time now for hits and misses of the year. and we're going to start with the misses first, kim. >> so my miss goes to alexandria ocasio-cortez, the new democrat and her new green deal which has to be one of the lousiest ideas for the u.s. economy and for the

political fortunes of democrats ever. i know she's a bit young but she might remember a decade ago, this was also barack obama's climate change ambition. he rammed a bill through the house, it played no small role in democrats losing the house the next year and that's because americans have no interest in a climate change plan like this, it's going to add trillions to the economy, hurt economic growth and make no measurable difference to climate change out ethere. so nancy pelosi better think real hard if she wants this agenda to be the face of her democratic party. >> paul: and mary. >> this is ay. miss for the economic and political disaster of the year. it's not connecticut. [ laughter ] >> this is venezuela. where 2.5 to 5 million people have fled the country. the ims expects another 2 million to leave this year. hyper inflation might reach 1 million percent. there are regular blackouts. there's no running water.

hospitals lack basic supplies. things like blood pressure medicine and cancer drugs are impossible for average people. the average venezuelan has lost 20 pounds. how could you mess up a country that was so prosperous, so badly. >> paul: the answer is socialism. kate? >> i think what is the trump's administration's worst policy move this year, it's an hhs rule that would basically look at tethering what we pay for certain drugs to what other countries pay. and paul, i thin i think what tt tells investors who are trying to bank roll the next cure foura disease is price controls are coming. if you're looking for a cure for alzheimer's, and you don't think you can recoup your investment, that will change your behavior. i hope the trump administration backs off that route in new year. >> paul: dan? >> ply miss of the year goes to the internet and while we know the internet is a wonderful tool, this is the year we

recognize it comes with a sharp and dangerous edge. mark zuckerberg was hauled before a congressional committee to explain facebook compromising individuals' privacy, a story circulated about parents in silicon valley not letting children use the very devices and tablets that they have created because they think it's hurting their kids. and finally, all the stories about hacking, especially chinese hacking into america's institutions. i think seeing that the internet has a dark side, there's no onswer to it yet, but that has got to be the beginning of wisdom. >> paul: my miss is the shootings of parkland and high school there andar the synagogue in pittsburgh, not only for their murderous evil because because they may end up leading to bad laws in the future that regulate guns for the law abiding. we have to take one more break. when we come back, our pa panels picks for hits of the year. >>got it. ran out of ink and i have a big meeting today

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paul: time for hits of the year, kim, start us off. >> so my hit of the year is on the news that the u.s. this year became a net exporter of petroleum products for the first time in decades and, again, take you back a decade ago everyone, the doomer and gloomers, even president bush saying alternative fuel heading toward energy independ anticipates

thanks to technological revolution that includes horizontal drilling and fracking, we are experiencing shell revolution, u.s. -- this is great for the economy, it's great for our ability to affect foreign events and our relationship with opec countries, this is just a win all around for the united states and it just keeps improving. paul: do i remember the woodchip economy, whatever to ha? >> supreme court justice brett kavanaugh for toughing it out despite humility and treatment that he got >> this is an important -- i think justice kavanaugh is so essential to the court. if a smear campaign was able to defeat justice -- a nominee it would destroy the process, it would destroy the institution and in that sense justice kavanaugh saved the courts. >> paul: thank you mary. kate? >> paul, i'd like to give a hit to the researchers who won the

2018 nobel prize for medicine for their work on immunotherapy which unleashes the immune system to fight cancer. the fda has been nothing short of revolutionary. we used chemotherapy which is highly toxic on modestly effective and the faked is fda s approving new drugs. i think amid the bad news of

with the trump presidency, somehow the fascism never seem today arrive. in fact, democrats we had an election, fair a election, democrats won, they're not complaining about the results, so maybe american democracy works and maybe the constitution hold up pretty well after all and maybe we will even in the next 2 years, so american institutions, if you have your own hit or miss of the year be sure to tweet it to us on jer on fnc, that's it for this week's show, thanks to my panel, thanks to all of you for watching, i'm paul gigot, happy new year.

we have to see you right here next week and on into 2019. ♪ >> and we begin new hour with fox news alert, day 9 of partial government shutdown over president trump's border wall, both sides remain dug in for now but we hear that that could change in the coming days. hello, everyone, welcome to america's news headquarters, i'm eric sean. >> i'm laura ingle in for arthel neville today. impact over border wall set to run new year with each side playing game game, as democrats prepare to take the house on thursday, nancy pelosi who has not yet wrapped up bid to remain speaker of gavel, taking vacation in hawaii, counselors to the president kellyanne conway not missing the c