Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

This article is mind-bendingly long enough, so we're not going to bother with any other introductory words at all. Instead, let's just get right to the awards, shall we?

 

   Destined For Political Stardom

I got a number of nominees for this one, from Jasmine Crockett to Adelita Grijalva to Hakeem Jeffries. That last one was from reader Kick, but while we agree with his optimism (since Jeffries will really only become a political star if Democrats retake the House in the midterms), we are still kind of in a "jury's still out" frame of mind over Jeffries. He has the potential to become a political star, but we're not sure if he's going to live up to that potential or not.

Instead, we went with the obvious, for this one. Zohran Mamdani is Destined For Political Stardom. In fact, we consider the reason we chose him to be so patently obvious that there's not even any need for further explanation.

Mamdani could crash and burn and wind up not achieving much of anything, but we remain a lot more optimistic and expect this to be just the first step on his road to political stardom.

 

   Destined For Political Oblivion

There are a few candidates for the Destined For Political Oblivion award that we would dearly like to see disappear entirely from politics, including Mitch McConnell (who is not running for re-election and already seems well on his way down the road to political oblivion) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (although she'll likely either become a rightwing cable news star or make a political comeback with a run for a different office). Chuck Schumer is even a contender, because if Democrats beat all the odds and actually retake control of the Senate in the midterms, I bet Schumer will be challenged for the leadership position soon after.

Reader Kick nominated Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, which has halfway come to pass already (since Bongino has now announced he'll be leaving the F.B.I. in January and has apparently already vacated his office). One can only hope Patel will follow him out too.

But we had to agree with reader nypoet22, who nominated the person who was already top on our own list: Andrew Cuomo. His failed comeback bid in the New York City mayor's race should -- hopefully! -- be the last chapter in his political story.

The entire election was a disgrace -- as was the very idea that Cuomo could actually come back and rehabilitate his image. And what was even more disgraceful were how many prominent Democrats backed Cuomo -- either overtly or covertly -- in their fear and loathing of Zohran Mamdani.

Cuomo running for mayor was already a step down for him (since he had previously served as governor), and we sincerely hope his loss puts any thoughts of any sort of comeback out of his mind forever. If the political world still has a shred of sanity left in it, then Andrew Cuomo is already Destined For Political Oblivion.

 

   Best Political Theater

This was a very tough category to pick a winner for, because we had so many nominees that made such an impact or presented their message so poignantly that we feel that virtually all of them deserve some kind of award.

This first one didn't make a big splash, but it was pretty funny. From a New York Times article describing the hack, which ran back in February (at the height of Musk's arrogance):

Monitors at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development on Monday briefly displayed a fake video depicting President Trump sucking the toes of Elon Musk, according to department employees and others familiar with what transpired. The video, which appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence, was emblazoned with the message "Long Live the Real King."

Apparently, the video ran on an endless loop for hours... heh....

A bit of amusing news from north of the border came from Moosehead, who offered (jokingly, we assume) for the low, low price of $2,491 (Canadian dollars, we assume) a "Presidential Pack" which was so large it required a forklift to move it. Emblazoned on the side of the rather large crate was:

Congratulations. You are now one thousand four hundred sixty-one beers closer to 2029. We can't predict how the next four years will go, but considering how 2025 started, we have a feeling this many beers will come in handy. Cheers.

This works out to a-beer-a-day until Trump leaves office, coincidentally enough. This was at the height of Trump's "let's make Canada the 51st state" idiocy, for context.

In a more serious vein, this year saw the incredible "Hands Off!" and "No Kings!" rallies, where millions of Americans turned out to protest Donald Trump and his policies. But we gave them an award last week, so we're going to pass on giving them Best Political Theater.

Bernie Sanders (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) launched a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, which reached deep into red-state territory and still drew record crowds. Here's hoping the Democrats will take note that true economic populism is popular with voters pretty much everywhere.

The video from Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelley, together with Representatives Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, and Jason Crow, which informed serving members of the United States military that it was their duty to refuse to follow illegal orders was one of the most effective bits of political theater all year, and deserves recognition.

There is an anonymous artist or group of artists that has been getting under Trump's skin all year long by placing (with the proper permits) artworks on the National Mall, within sight of the U.S. Capitol that scathingly mock Trump in various ways. This is the same group that created the "poop sculpture" of Nancy Pelosi's desk (to remind everyone of how disgusting the January 6th insurrectionists truly were) in October of last year.

This year, they first erected a gold-plated giant thumbs-up squashing the head and crown of the Statue of Liberty, with "Dictator Approved" messages on all sides of it. One week later, they followed this up with a gold-spray-painted television set that showed a repeating loop of a video of Trump doing what he calls "dancing" (shudder), including one of him busting out his dance moves while standing next to Jeffrey Epstein (retch). A plaque at the base proclaimed: "In the United States of America you have the freedom to display your so-called 'art,' no matter how ugly it is. -- The Trump White House, June 2025." A few months later, they returned with a statue of Trump and Epstein skipping merrily along, while holding hands. Throughout all of this, the artist(s) have managed to remain anonymous, even though they have been filing for permits for these art installations with the U.S. Park Service. We certainly hope there will be more to come next year!

One other art installation on the National Mall deserves mention here, this one financed by Ben Cohen of "Ben & Jerry's" fame. This one was a large ice sculpture that spelled out the word "DEMOCRACY" -- which slowly melted away, all day long. That's a pretty meaningful political statement made in a very elegant way, we have to admit.

But in the end, we find that we have to agree with reader Kick and award the Best Political Theater to Seth Todd, a protester in Portland, Oregon, who started a viral trend by deciding to don an inflatable frog costume to attend the protest against ICE and other of Trump's goons. Soon donations flowed in to provide free inflatable costumes for anyone who wanted to slip one on. These included (as we wrote at the time): "rainbow-bedecked unicorns, dinosaurs, squirrels, bears, sharks, ostriches, chickens, cows, raccoons, South Park characters, a capybara, and an entire menagerie of other amusing costumes."

This was in response to Donald Trump calling Portland "war-ravaged" and Attorney General Pam Bondi insisting that those protesting were somehow "organized crime" because (gasp!) they were carrying "thousands of signs that all match." This demonization was a lot harder to pull off when the videos showed inflatable cartoon characters and fanciful beasts being brutally pepper-sprayed by masked agents.

This is why it worked so well, as political theater. And this is why we are awarding the Best Political Theater for the year to Seth Todd, all the people who funded the free costumes, and all the protesters who decided to put them on to make a very simple statement.

 

   Worst Political Theater

There was also a plethora of nominees for Worst Political Theater this year, which stemmed mostly from the fact that a lot of what Trump and his minions have been doing has been purely performative in nature. Kristi Noem, in particular, has enjoyed cosplaying for the cameras to a disgusting degree (such as when she visited the infamous El Salvadorian prison while wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch, for instance).

We could even take the award title quite literally and hand it to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, who just decided to slap Donald Trump's name on the building. That was about as North-Korea-dictator as anything else that happened this year.

But there were plenty of other gross displays of indecency, from Elon Musk's "move fast and break things" orgy at the start of the year to using the White House front lawn to sell Teslas, the "Department of War," or the spectacle of U.S. troops being sent to American cities for no reason other than intimidation and all the photo-ops it created.

There were others too -- such as what Trump has done to the Oval Office itself, which is downright barf-worthy to anyone who has the slightest shred of real taste.

Democrats had some bad political theater this year as well, such as when they caved on the government shutdown without getting much of anything in return, or Gavin Newsom deciding to sit down with rightwing lunatics on his podcast (to further his presidential hopes, quite obviously).

On the right, there is a growing internal battle over (you cannot make this stuff up, folks) whether they should be welcoming to neo-Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers or not (see "Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes" if you missed all of this -- it's just the most prominent example, really).

Then there is the entire basis for the undeclared war on Venezuela, although that might be a tad too serious for this category. Still, the entire rationale (if you can even call it that) for blowing up boats in international waters is nothing short of political theater taking a very deadly turn.

We have two runners-up in this category, both videos from the White House (which we are not going to link to, since they are both disgusting in their own individual way). The first was a jaw-dropping real-estate pitch to remake the Gaza Strip into some sort of playground for millionaires, complete with resorts and luxury housing. Once all those pesky Palestinians had been killed or evicted, then Jared Kushner could just swoop in and rebuild it as a new Riviera! It sounds like I am making that up, but I swear I am not.

The second was Trump's response to one of the "No Kings!" rallies which showed him as a macho pilot of a warplane dumping diarrhea all over the protesters' heads. This video may go down in history as "the most disgusting and disgraceful misuse of taxpayer dollars in American history," in fact -- it was truly that bad.

But we decided that the Worst Political Theater this year was the meeting in the Oval Office between Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where Vance and Trump yelled and berated Zelenskyy for not being sufficiently thankful for being treated like a medieval serf in front of his lord and master. This could also go down in history, as the most humiliating display of American arrogance in at least the past half-century or so. It made millions of people downright ashamed to be an American, and that is why it was the Worst Political Theater of the year.

 

   Worst Political Scandal

Being a year with Trump in control, there was no shortage of political scandals to choose from.

Trump pardoning all the January 6th criminals at the very start of his term is very high on this list. I don't want to hear any Republican ever claim that they are the "party of law and order" ever again, after this travesty of justice. And pretty much every pardon Trump has issued since then only adds to this ignominy.

Trump's pardoning the former president of Honduras from a 45-year sentence for smuggling 400 tons of cocaine into this country deserves special mention, out of the rest of Trump's abuse of the pardon power, in particular.

Pete Hegseth has been doing his damnedest to participate in as many scandals as he can, as well. Signalgate should have gotten him fired the day it was revealed. And that was just the most memorable of the idiocy and scandal emanating from the Pentagon all year long.

Pam Bondi's subservience of the Department of Justice has been beyond scandalous, all year long. This is true "weaponization" of the police powers of the federal government, and it didn't get nearly enough attention.

My runner-up for this category, however, was the gold-plated plane given to Trump as a flat-out bribe by the emirate of Qatar. Trump accepted the plane, is going to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion taxpayer dollars refurbishing it and bringing it up to the proper security levels, which will take most of his term -- and then Trump will no doubt fly around in it for a few months and then take it with him to his presidential library when he leaves office. This is so off-the-charts scandalous it sounds like something a comedy writer would come up with, but it is our new reality. No bribe is too big for Trump, who has absolutely no shame about accepting them right out in the open for all to see. Who is going to call him on it? Pam Bondi's Justice Department? Don't make me laugh. The Supreme Court? They declared Trump's actions kinglike and unprosecutable before he even took office. Congress? Oh, surely you jest.

But throughout the whole year, there was one megascandal that shoved all the rest of them aside. And it is going to come to a crescendo today, in fact (it may already have, we're not watching the news all day in order to finish this article!), as today is the deadline for Bondi to release all the files the Department of Justice has on Jeffrey Epstein.

This scandal was almost self-inflicted by Trump and his buddies. They spun it up into a giant conspiracy theory previous to last year's election, and then they tried to soft-pedal it early in the year -- which generated a huge backlash among the MAGA faithful and the looniest of the conspiracy theorists on the right. Which then led to a big push from Congress to "release the files!" Which led to a discharge petition that so scared Speaker Mike Johnson that he sent Congress home early before the summer break and then refused to swear in a duly-elected new House member for two months -- all to avoid the discharge petition's built-in timeline for a vote.

By the time the vote was held, Trump himself tried his mightiest to fend it off and then in one of the most ridiculously-unbelievable flip-flops in American political history announced he was for voting for the measure. With this green light, it passed Congress almost unanimously in both houses (one lone GOP member in the House voted against it).

Which started a 30-day clock to release all the files.

Which ends today.

No matter whether the file have any bombshell revelations or not, by sheer size and volume of attention, the Epstein files scandal was easily the Worst Political Scandal of the year.

[Although, as a footnote, we do have to agree with reader Kick's tangent nomination: "the Trump administration giving a sweetheart deal to a convicted sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, by transferring her to a "club fed" in Texas. Maxwell, of course, was rewarded by lying for Trump, and the morons in the Trump administration are now acting like they are just bystanders and have no idea how in the world that happened." Can't say we disagree with any of that....]

 

   Most Underreported Story

There were plenty of underreported stories this year to choose from, sadly enough.

What first sprang to mind was "Trump's lies," since Trump's various vendettas against media organizations have cast such a pall over political reporting that the major news outlets have mostly all just thrown up their hands and completely given up on even reporting on Trump's lies.

Remember when fact-checkers were everywhere? Remember when the vaunted Washington Post ran a running tally of Trump's first-term lies (that topped out at an incredible 30,000-plus before he left office)? Remember when journalists would call Trump on his lies to his face? Yeah, those days seem to be gone. Now they just report what Trump says without even bothering to point out "Trump's head is, of course, completely up his own ass on this one, as his statement is light-years from the truth."

Let's see, what else?

The massive government firings that have taken place all year long -- from Elon Musk's team of idiots to the government shutdown -- and all the fallout from them. The federal government's services have notably gone into freefall in too many department to count. When it first happened, there were occasional stories about air traffic control towers being understaffed and Social Security calls going forever unanswered, but those stories just sort of faded away. What hasn't faded away are all the ripple effects from all these firings, but the news media just largely seemed to lose interest in the story.

The assassination of the former speaker of the Minnesota house of representatives Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, by a rightwing fanatic. Compare and contrast the coverage they got with Charlie Kirk's assassination, to see how underreported this story truly was.

But the Most Underreported Story of the year has been Trump's savage war on science. His administration has been absolutely relentless in shutting off grant money to scientists and universities, firing scientists and doctors en masse, dismantling databases that contain data they don't agree with, trying to erase the entire concept of climate change, and so many other horrifying tactics it deserves not just some constant reporting but indeed whole series of reports to catalog it all.

Donald Trump is singlehandedly trying to "Make America stupid again," that's about the easiest way to put it. He is trying to destroy one of the solid pillars of strength this country has on the world stage -- our research and innovation in the scientific realm. Private companies can only pick up so much of the slack, and other countries are actively poaching brilliant scientists who have been tossed to the curb by Trump's war on science. This is all going to be very hard (if not impossible) to put back together again after Trump is gone. America may lose its position as the world leader in science and technological innovation, all due to the petulance and envy of Trump and others like him towards anyone who is smarter than they are.

It is tragic and epic in scope. And it deserved (and still does deserve) a lot more media attention than it has so far gotten. So Trump's war on science was easily the Most Underreported Story of the year.

 

   Most Overreported Story

The murder of Charlie Kirk was the Most Overreported Story of the year. He was not an elected official. He never served in government. He led a political movement of young conservatives, but his activist career in no way justified the saturation media coverage his death got.

We do understand it was a spectacularly horrifying event -- and one that was caught on camera. That is catnip to the news media, obviously. But even so, the ripples from his murder went far wider than they should have, in multiple ways.

Far from their days of decrying "cancel culture," the rightwingers all went on a spree of revenge against anyone who posted anything even slightly negative about Charlie Kirk in the immediate aftermath of his death. Dozens of people were fired or even arrested for social media posts they had made. So much for rightwingers being the guardians of "free speech," eh?

Government flags were flown at half-staff after Kirk's death -- again, for a man who had only been involved in political commentary, not in politics itself. The vice president flew his body back home in Air Force Two. The president showed up for his funeral rally, and spewed hatred (even while conservatives were trying to denounce the left for extreme political language).

Looking back in a few years, we have to wonder how many people will even remember Charlie Kirk's name. But from the moment of his murder for an unbelievably long time, you could not escape hearing it on the news. So yes, while his death was tragic and reprehensible and everyone should condemn such political violence no matter who is the target, it was also the Most Overreported Story of the year.

 

   Biggest Government Waste

The answer that springs to mind immediately in this category isn't technically eligible. While Trump tearing down the East Wing of the White House so he can build the tackiest monument to his own bad taste, his ballroom will actually be financed by private money (that Trump got through strong-arming corporate bosses). So while it is indeed the most egregious waste imaginable, it's not actually government waste.

We had a few other good candidates for the Biggest Government Waste award as well. The one that personally bugged us the most (since it happened close to home, relatively speaking) was when, after the wildfires ravaged parts of Los Angeles early in the year, Trump ordered somebody somewhere to "turn on a valve and show me water flowing." This was beyond stupid, it was downright criminal idiocy.

Trump is convinced there is a big master valve that controls all water flow in California (spoiler alert: there isn't), and he was also convinced that somehow L.A. just didn't have enough water and that was the reason the fires were so bad. So he commanded action. So somebody went up to a dam up in the mountains and turned on the water valves. This gave Trump the video he was looking for -- water gushing free -- but did less than nothing to solve any problem. In the first place, the water released by that particular dam didn't go to L.A. at all. Instead it flowed down and flooded some fields in the Central Valley. This water was meant to irrigate fields for farmers later in the year, when the rainy season had ended, but Trump didn't care. After a day or so, saner heads prevailed and the complete waste of water was shut off again. But Trump got the video he wanted, which is all he cared about. That was a pretty big government waste, at least here in the Golden State.

Then there's the hideous decor in the Oval Office. All of Trump's gold-colored crap that he's hung on all the walls will have to be pried off and thrown in the garbage by the next U.S. president who has an iota of good taste. So all of it is nothing short of government waste (for the whole world to see).

Then there are more serious examples of government waste to consider. Such as our growing "war" with Venezuela. Bombing drug boats that are (1) not carrying fentanyl at all, but (2) at the worst carrying cocaine to be shipped to Europe is a huge waste of the American government's resources. Not to mention what it is doing to our global reputation.

I considered "Trump's war on D.E.I. and all people of color throughout American history, past and present" because just like the Oval Office schlock it will all have to be painfully reconstructed (things such as museum displays, not to mention all the people baselessly fired) by some future president with an ounce of good sense.

We have two runners-up in this category, the first one nominated by reader Kick: "the hysterical parade thrown for Trump -- which was a total unnecessary waste of taxpayer's money," which we heartily agree with. Holding a "Dear Leader" communist-style parade of military might through the streets of Washington D.C. was abhorrent in the extreme. Especially considering that almost nobody showed up to watch it (the photos of the crowds are, shall we say, underwhelming) and even Trump himself could barely keep awake for it.

Our favorite example of the government just setting money on fire, however, was the reported billion dollars it is going to cost the taxpayers to refurbish the "free plane" Trump got as a naked bribe from Qatar, to bring it up to the standards of Air Force One. By the time they get done doing so, Trump will be on his way out of office and then the plane will just sit in Trump's new presidential library. A bigger waste is hard to imagine, in fact.

But we're going with the consensus view from readers this year and awarding the Biggest Government Waste (paradoxically, as reader nypoet22 aptly pointed out) to Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency." In fact, the waste (in so many ways -- the waste of money, the waste of human talent, the waste of time, the waste of tons of legal fees, the waste of our standing as a country) is so patently obvious that we don't even need to provide any details at all.

 

   Best Government Dollar Spent

All we had for this category were the National Park Service (which is always our go-to default when we have nobody else in mind) and New Mexico providing free child care to all. So we were pleasantly surprised when we read our readers' nominations and those were exactly the two that were independently nominated by them.

But then we had a late brainstorm, and we're going to give Best Government Dollar Spent to all the foreign aid that got halted this year. Because it was still in place for (at the very least) Joe Biden's 20 days in office, we are giving this award out in an effort to shame Trump and everyone else involved in one of the most shameful and disgraceful fiascos of American foreign policy ever.

This aid saved lives. Millions of them. It fed starving children. It vaccinated children. It fought deadly diseases. It provided all kinds of humanitarian services in almost too many countries to count. Foreign aid has been held up as some sort of giant bugaboo by conservatives for years, but it has never been more than a tiny, tiny fraction of the federal budget each year (even though the public consistently and wrongly estimates it to be a gigantic fraction of the budget). This year they all got their dream of slashing it to the bone.

But that ideological dream was an absolute nightmare for millions across the globe. Ever since World War II, America has benefited enormously from its benevolent "soft power," and foreign aid was an integral part of that success.

Trump trashed it all. He halted all the money that bought (incredibly cheaply, when considered with all the other federal budget items) enormous amounts of goodwill toward America from lands most Americans could never find on a map.

So the Best Government Dollar Spent this year were all those foreign aid funds... right up until Trump stopped them.

 

   Boldest Political Tactic

There were a handful of these to choose from: Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. Democrats shutting the government down for the longest period in history. Zohran Mamdani's campaign in the New York City mayor's race. And the use of the discharge petition in the House to do an end-run around Speaker Johnson.

But although we hate to admit it, we're going to have to hand this award for a military tactic that was also political in nature. Donald Trump bombing Iran's buried nuclear facilities was indeed a bold tactic. Nobody had any idea how Iran would react. And Trump's boasting to the contrary, nobody had any real idea how much of their nuclear program the bombing actually destroyed, in the end.

It was a big gamble. It could have ended far worse. It could have backfired in spectacular ways. But in the end it didn't. In the end, it was quite effective, at least for now. Iran quickly entered into a ceasefire with Israel and America, and we haven't heard a peep from them since, really.

So although I warned against doing so at the time and although it does pain me to admit it, the Boldest Political Tactic (and boldest military tactic) this year was Trump bombing Iran's nuclear sites.

 

   Best Idea

In keeping with the world-stage outlook of that last award, reader nypoet22 had an interesting suggestion for this award: "God help us, Europe rearming. it's become necessary, and I think they're ready to be responsible about it and not repeat last century's errors."

But we're going with the home team on this one and giving Best Idea to Gavin Newsom's Proposition 50. This was the ballot measure that countered the mid-decade redistricting that Texas did, to hand the Republican Party five more seats in the House of Representatives. Newsom's response was a welcome one for Democrats everywhere -- "Oh yeah? Well two can play at that game!"

More than anything else that happened over the past year, this showed that some Democrats were willing to fight back. Proposition 50 showed that Democrats can fight fire with fire when we need to, and by flipping five California House districts from red to blue, it perfectly countered Texas.

And, unsurprisingly, it won in in a landslide (roughly 2-to-1). Gavin Newsom fighting back with Prop 50 was indeed the Best Idea of the year.

 

   Worst Idea

Another tough category to just pick one, because there were so many bad ideas floated and/or implemented this year.

In fact, there are so many we're just going to whip through them without explanations: DoGE, pardoning the January 6th criminals, pardoning world-class drug dealers, selling pardons, denying citizenship to infants born here, going to the Supreme Court to try to cut food stamp money to the poor, tariffs (particularly "tariffs on penguins," as nypoet22 pointed out), the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (even the title was a really bad idea) which slashed Medicaid funding, flying people who had not been convicted of any crime to hellish foreign prisons, creating our own hellish concentration camps here in America, mid-decade redistricting, trying to shutter the Department of Education (and many others), masked federal thugs kidnapping people on the street, war with Venezuela, committing war crimes, weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after the president's enemies, and finally "reopening Alcatraz."

But the Worst Idea of the year was, to me, destroying the protections of federal civil service workers and taking America back to the middle of the 19th century by reviving the "spoils system." Think about it -- the next Democratic president is going to have their work cut out for them on Day One, because they'll have to fire all the MAGA ideologues Trump has installed throughout the federal executive branch. Keeping them there would only be courting disaster. And even if a Democrat returns to hiring competent but nonpartisan people to do these jobs, the next Republican president will likely also institute a purge and put their own ideologues in place. Trump has destroyed a bedrock system that has worked very well for over 150 years, and it's likely going to take a very long time to get back to it after he's gone. Which is why "Spoils System 2.0" was indeed the Worst Idea of the year (and perhaps "the decade," if not "the whole century").

 

   Sorry To See You Go

We've got an awfully long list this year, since in 2025 we lost a lot of memorable people. So long, in fact, that we're going to present it in paragraph form this time around, since it would be so incredibly long as a list. We begin with Melissa Hortman, the former speaker of the Minnesota house of representatives, who was viciously gunned down and murdered alongside her husband in one of the worst acts of political violence this year.

The rest of our list, in no particular order whatsoever, and with no particular explanation for most:

Raúl Grijalva, Gerry Connolly, the FiveThirtyEight.com website, Tom Lehrer, Rob Reiner, Frank Gehry, Prunella "Sybil Fawlty" Scales, Ace Frehley, Susan Stamberg, Jane Goodall, Robert Redford, James Lovell, Loni Anderson, Ozzy Osbourne, Martin Cruz Smith, David Gergen, Michael Madsen, Bill Moyers, Lalo Schifrin, Carolyn McCarthy, Brian Wilson, Sly Stone, Loretta Swit, Jay North, Val Kilmer, Alan Simpson, Gene Hackman, Michelle Trachtenberg, Roberta Flack, Tom Robbins, David Edward Byrd, Marianne Faithfull, Jules Feiffer, David Lynch, Sam Moore, Donna Godchaux, Roberta Flack, Peter Yarrow, Kitty Dukakis, David Souter, Charles Rangel, and of course, the longest-living president in American history, Jimmy Carter.

We're sorry to see each and every one of them go.

Requiescat In Pace

 

   15 Minutes Of Fame

We're going to hand the 15 Minutes Of Fame award out with a twist, this year. Rather than a list of people who made a splash here or there, instead we are going to give it to "Donald Trump's distractions."

The idiotic things that pop out of Trump's mouth never stop. It is a continual firehose coming from his id, usually completely unfiltered. At best, the news media chases these idiotic statements as a shiny, shiny distraction from whatever Trump doesn't currently want to talk about, and at worst the news media actually tries to "sanewash" them by taking them seriously. "Hmm... how would a military invasion of Canada to force it to become the 51st state actually work?" the pundits wonder.

It's a constant game Trump plays with them -- trolling the media with lunacy and phantasms galore!

But the thing is -- it usually works.

Therefore we can't give the 15 Minutes Of Fame award to any one particular instance of Trump's Looney-Tunes red herrings, but instead to his constant use of them to make the media run around chasing their tail in an amusing little circle. It's not exactly what Andy Warhol predicted, but Trump can make anything famous for 15 minutes -- and he often does, because he absolutely loves to play this game.

 

   Best Spin

Let's see... every South Park episode in the current season?

(Heh.)

Reader nypoet22 suggested the Canadian anti-tariff ad featuring Ronald Reagan's thoughts on the matter, which we had to admit was a pretty good one.

But the Best Spin of the year (and hopefully next year, too) was Democrats finally coming up with a humdinger of a political talking point or slogan to run on.

Before this political cycle, people in politics (both politicians and pundits) would talk about the "cost of living." Or "the economy." Or "inflation."

But Democrats married the concept with a word that captured exactly how dire things have gotten for most average Americans. And then (will wonders never cease!) the media actually started using it all the time. It even got under Trump's thin skin in a big way, too (which was a bonus). As a successful talking point or political slogan, it was overwhelmingly successful, and if Democrats lean in hard on it in the midterm campaigns it might just deliver control of at least one chamber of Congress back to them. That's pretty powerful stuff, you've got to admit.

Which is why "the affordability crisis" is the Best Spin of the year, hands down.

 

   Worst Spin

We got "Gulf of America" as a nomination, which we had to say made us chuckle. We would also like to give a nod of recognition to pretty much everything Donald Trump called a "Democrat hoax," which was a pathetically transparent attempt to divert attention away from something he didn't want to talk about. The Epstein files were a "Democrat hoax" (even though the whole conspiracy theory emerged from the hard right). "Affordability" was a Democratic hoax too. Every time any reporter tried to insert a tiny bit of reality into a conversation with Trump, he would consistently respond that the whole thing (whatever it was) was nothing more than a Democratic hoax.

But then at the very end of the year, Trump gave one interview that absolutely took the prize. It was so laughably out-of-touch that we sincerely hope to see this moment used in hundreds of Democratic ads during the midterms. When asked by a reporter what grade he would give himself on his handling of the American economy, Trump responded with "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."

Paul Krugman -- who unlike Trump has actually won a Nobel Prize (in economics) -- had the best response to this imaginable. He wrote an article titled "An A+++++ Economy, My A++" (which deserves some sort of award on its own, really!).

So yes, Trump's egomaniacal "A+++++" grade inflation on the economy was indeed the Worst Spin of the year.

 

   Most Honest Person

This was a tough one, because we just didn't have anyone who made a name for themself by being notably honest this year.

So we're going to award the Most Honest Person as a somewhat derivative award this year. It might be better called the "Most Insightful Person," but even with that clarification it all happened years ago, so we do admit the weakness of this award (before anyone complains).

Back in 2018, a writer for The Atlantic, Adam Sewer, wrote a piece that was titled: "The Cruelty Is The Point." Later, in 2021, he expanded the idea into a whole book of the same name (The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present, And Future Of Trump's America).

His case was a simple one -- the abject cruelty of how many of Trump's policies were implemented were not some byproduct or unintended consequence, but instead this cruelty was the driving force behind the policies themselves. As he wrote in his book:

Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.... Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.

One other notable line from the book: "Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain."

Although Sewer wrote all of this years ago, it didn't really achieve the status of a viral meme until the first year of Trump's second term. Because all of the ICE raids and troops sent to American cities were designed not to hide such cruelty but indeed to showcase it, and because people like Kristi Noem positively revelled in coming up with more and more cruelty in their public messages, it became impossible to ignore or deny. So pundits began repeating the line over and over again this year: "The cruelty is the point."

So even though it's not a perfect fit (for the timing of it or for the definition of it), we are going to hand the Most Honest Person of the year to the writer who came up with the perfect phrase to sum up what Trump and his stooges have been doing all year long. It's the best we can do, this particular year.

 

   Biggest Liar

Some of these require many paragraphs of explanations and lists of all the other possible candidates, but this one's pretty easy. In fact, we might as well just hand Biggest Liar to Donald Trump for 2026, 2027, and 2028 as well, while we're at it.

Trump's firehose of lies was so unrelenting that PolitiFact didn't even bother weighing in with their "Lie Of The Year" annual award, they instead threw up their hands and declared "2025 is the Year Of The Lies."

As always, the easiest way to tell whether Trump is lying or not is to see whether his lips are moving. There could be no other winner, and likely won't be for years to come.

 

   Most Overrated

We had two politicians who garnered a nomination in both of the following categories, which is somewhat unusual. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has apparently impressed some Democrats while disappointing others, to begin with.

We did consider Zohran Mamdani for Most Overrated, in the sense of being overrated as a demonic figure of the collapse of Western civilization -- by Republicans, by some Democrats (who should know better), and by some media outlets. Our response to all of it could be summed up as: "Jeez, give the guy a chance, why don't you?"

But instead, we are going to give the Most Overrated award to "checks and balances." Every schoolchild in America is taught this phrase to explain all the inherent contradictions and omissions from the U.S. Constitution. There are (theoretically) supposed to be "three co-equal branches of government," but that conveniently leaves out what happens when one "co-equal" branch oversteps their authority an infringes on another "co-equal" branch. The magical checks and balances are supposed to solve such crises. Things like Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and signed by the president -- something which is not actually laid out in the Constitution, by the way -- and Congress impeaching federal judges and presidents are all supposed to somehow keep the American governmental system in check and in balance.

But it all supposes that the three branches operate in good faith. As Donald Trump has now shown beyond a shadow of a doubt, when a president operates in bad faith, after packing the Supreme Court with his own toadies, then the whole checks-and-balances system proves to be nothing more than a candle in the wind.

So to me, this year's Most Overrated was what we all learned as kids -- the sacred concept of "checks and balances" saving America from abuses of power. It sure is a nice fairy tale to believe in, but who honestly believes in it after the year we've had? And we've got three more to go....

 

   Most Underrated

As mentioned, we also got nominations for Most Underrated for both Hakeem Jeffries and Zohran Mamdani, for pretty obvious reasons (Jeffries has done an admirable job of unifying his caucus in the House, in particular).

We also considered several Democratic governors (such as Andy Beshear and governor-elect Mikie Sherrill) for the award, for beating expectations both in governance and at the ballot box.

But we find ourselves convinced by reader nypoet22's nomination of Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. Zelenskyy was considered a joke when he won the country's presidency -- which is not exactly an insulting thing to say, since he had previously been a comedian on television who portrayed a fictional Ukrainian president. Since Russia invaded his country, however, he has proven to be a world leader that has proven his (and his country's) mettle in spectacular ways that nobody could have expected.

This year, even after being subjected to that humiliating Oval Office meeting with Trump and Vance, and even after Trump leaned hard on him to just roll over and accept Russian terms for surrender, Zelenskyy is still fighting the good fight for his country on a daily basis.

Vladimir Putin certainly underestimated Zelenskyy in a big way, and ever since Zelenskyy has been beating expectations time and time again. Which is why the Most Underrated of the year award goes to him.

 

   Predictions

As always, let's start with a scorecard of what we got right last year and what we got laughably wrong. Here's our list of 2025 predictions, from last year's column:

Donald Trump will not end the war in Ukraine on Day One.

Donald Trump will soon tire of being overshadowed by Elon Musk. He will probably allow Musk to continue his DOGE effort, but he will tell him to do it a lot more quietly and report to Trump directly, so that Trump can announce any proposal (and claim all the credit for it) rather than have Musk continue to overshadow and/or outshine him (we realize those are contradictory metaphors, but hey...). What will really grate on Trump is if Democrats continue calling Elon "President Musk."

Musk will not be elected speaker of the House.

Mike Johnson will continue to be speaker, but only after a very fractious speakership election in early January.

The entire Trump agenda will hinge on the willingness of the Republican House to follow his lead blindly, and with a razor-thin margin of victory, this will be even more impossible to do in 2025 than it was in the past two years. Meaning not much of anything will get done, beyond the core things Trump absolutely demands.

Almost all of his cabinet choices will be confirmed by the Senate. Two will not make it (although our crystal ball is fuzzy enough that we are not going to name names here).

[From nypoet22's crystal ball, which we agree with:] At least a third of Trump's cabinet will be fired/and or replaced before the end of 2025.

Trump will start rounding up undocumented immigrants, but will stick to concentrating on people who have committed other crimes at first.

When his immigration czar moves beyond this, there will be a public backlash because he will go too far for the general public to stomach. Trump will then dial down his efforts considerably.

Trump will succeed in getting more massive tax cuts passed (it's what Republicans do best, after all), but he won't get everything he asks for. The tax cuts will heavily benefit the ultra-wealthy and corporations, while average workers will get peanuts, once again.

Trump will not be able to make good on his promises to bring the price of gasoline and groceries way, way down -- but his followers will largely forgive him (or just forget he ever promised to do so).

And a general sort of prediction -- one we feel pretty confident about, in fact: things are going to get a whole lot worse before anything gets better. Under Trump, this is almost inevitable.

So let's add up the score, one by one:

Donald Trump did not end the war in Ukraine on Day One. Or Day One Hundred. Or Day Three Hundred.

Well, I didn't describe it perfectly, but I am giving myself a point for "Donald Trump will soon tire of being overshadowed by Elon Musk." It took longer than I thought it would, and it didn't end exactly the way I thought, but all told, I think I called this one right.

Elon Musk was not elected speaker of the House. That's 3-for-3 so far!

The next one is only worth a half of a point, since while Mike Johnson is indeed still speaker, he retained the speakership on the first ballot in January.

I could award myself a half-point for the next one, because Congress did indeed not get much done this year, but surprisingly the Republican House kowtowed to Trump in rather slavish fashion all year long. They did revolt over the Epstein files, and they are certainly now feeling their oats with a number of discharge petitions that either Johnson or Trump doesn't approve of, but it all came too late to count as an accurate prediction.

We're going to award a full point for the next one, although we have to admit we were smart not to guess who the two cabinet nominees who didn't make it were (since we would have been wrong). Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for attorney general when it became clear that the Senate would have rejected him, and Elise Stefanik withdrew from consideration for U.N. ambassador because Trump was worried that she would be replaced in the House (after a special election) by a Democrat.

OK, both we and nypoet22 were wrong on this next one -- because nowhere near a third of Trump's cabinet has stepped down or been fired. They're all too good at the tongue-baths that have replaced sane cabinet meetings... so no points for this one.

Trump said he was targeting only criminals for his immigration roundup efforts, but he flat-out lied about this. They began rounding up anyone they felt like, so no credit for this one.

But we are going to give ourselves credit for the next one, because there was indeed a backlash at the heavy-handed tactics used by ICE to round up immigrants, and although they are still doing so Trump has indeed dialed back putting the spotlight on such efforts.

We're also giving ourselves credits for the tax cuts, since we were pretty spot-on with predicting how it would happen.

Trump has indeed failed to make good on his promises to bring down the price of gasoline (he had promised prices would be at $1.55 a gallon by now, just in case anyone's forgotten), but even some of his own followers have indeed started noticing Trump's failure on the whole affordability front, so we'll only give ourselves a half-point for this one.

And we're not even going to count that last one, since it was such a "gimme" in the first place. Things have indeed gotten a whole lot worse -- a whole lot worse than any of us (me included) had ever imagined, in fact. But it was so obvious that it doesn't even really count as a prediction.

Adding all of that up, out of eleven real predictions, I scored seven right, which is a lot better than I normally do! But then in many ways, Trump's first year was pretty predictable. The second year is going to be tougher to see in the crystal ball.

But we've got to make the effort, so here goes... here are our predictions for 2026:

House Speaker Mike Johnson will live in fear of a "no confidence" vote being forced upon him all year long by disaffected members of his own caucus, but this will not actually happen because of the argument: "That's the last thing we should do in the middle of an election year!" Johnson will still be speaker at the end of next year.

The Democrats will not be able to convince enough Republicans in both houses to come to any sort of agreement on extending the Obamacare subsidies by the end of January, and will as a direct result shut the government down once again. But this time the crisis will be real for tens of millions of Americans (who will have seen their premiums double or worse), instead of it being some theoretical thing in the future. The public will heavily support the Democrats, and Republicans will hammer out some compromise within the first two weeks of the shutdown.

Donald Trump's first official State Of The Union speech will be a longer version of the holiday prime-time message we saw this week -- full of lies, full of blame for Joe Biden, full of boasting about things which aren't true, and full of promises that everything will be wonderful real soon now.

Trump will launch bombing attacks on sites on the ground in Venezuela that he identifies as "drug labs," but he will not launch an actual boots-on-the-ground invasion by American soldiers. He will keep on blowing up drug boats. His actions will be increasingly condemned by the rest of the world.

The war in Ukraine will drag on until at least next summer. Putin will refuse to make any concessions at all.

Trump's cage-match on the White House lawn for his birthday will be an even bigger tasteless fiasco than his dictator's military parade was last year.

The big tacky ballroom will not be completed by year's end.

Trump's "Qatar Force One" plane will also not be ready to fly by year's end.

Trump will attempt to slap his own name on something that is so disgusting that even Republicans in Congress balk (no "Trump-Lincoln Memorial," in other words, although that's just one example of how it could come to pass).

There will be increasing outbreaks of childhood diseases, which will be most acute in the red states where vaccinations have steeply fallen.

And finally, two big ones to close on:

Democrats will win back the House in a blue wave. They will also pick up at least one (possibly even two) seats in the Senate, but it won't be enough to win back control of the chamber.

Texas will find out that at least one (possibly two) of their newly-gerrymandered districts turns out to have been "dummymandered" instead, since their predictions of voting patterns will have been too optimistic (especially among Latino voters) and Democrats will win the district(s) instead.

OK, that's it for our guesses for the coming year. We end by congratulating you for making it all the way through this insanely-long wrap-up, and we sincerely wish all our readers a happy holiday season and a spectacular new year! And, as always, to end in true McLaughlin fashion, we now say to all of you:

"Bye-bye!"

-- Chris Weigant

 

If you're interested in traveling down Memory Lane, here are all the previous years of this awards column:

2025 -- [Part 1]
2024 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2023 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2022 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2021 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2020 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2019 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2018 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2017 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2016 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2015 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2014 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2013 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2012 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2011 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2010 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2009 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2008 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2007 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]
2006 -- [Part 1] [Part 2]

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant