AND THE WINNER IS...

The 2025 MAGAVerse Awards: All the Biggest Hits, Misses, Meltdowns and (Alleged) Felonies

This was the year that was, after all—unless the White House press briefing room says that it wasn’t.

Opinion

If 2025 felt like it was written by AI trained on scrapped House of Cards scripts and Truth Social rants, you’re not far off. This past year has largely felt like watching democracy speedrun its own demise while proclaiming that THINGS HAD NEVER BEEN BETTER!

After all, we’re Americans, baby. We measure our years in scandals per capita and how many times we said “that can’t be real” before checking and discovering it is—and is also, in fact, worse. The worst.

Wait, did someone say the worst of the worst? Here they are: the 2025 MAGAverse Awards, celebrating a political ecosystem that operates on the same principles as a pyramid scheme having a panic attack. The trophies are faux gold, and they all go to Trump. No acceptance speeches allowed because everyone’s already talked too much, and frankly, most of them should be under oath at this point.

1. Best Redemption Arc That’s One Truth Social Post Away from Imploding: Marjorie Taylor Greene.

MTG spent the latter part of 2025 in a state that can only really be described as ideological jazz hands. One minute, she’s pushing to keep ACA subsidies, the next, she’s fighting with Trump and demanding the Epstein files. Then boom: her retirement announcement. Either she’s growing as a person—and not just in the CrossFit sense—or she hired the world’s most confused PR team.

2. Best Supporting Bully in a Diplomatic Dumpster Fire: J.D. Vance

Cast your minds back to February, when an Oval Office meeting with President Zelensky played out televised like a pay-per-view cage match. (Perhaps inspiration for next year’s UFC showdown in the White House?)

Vance rarely misses a moment to be petty and unpleasant in the spotlight, but this was a particularly galling example of treating international affairs like the comments section of a Fox News article.

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3. Lifetime Achievement in ‘LOOK OVER THERE!’: Trumpworld, writ large.

Nothing says “please stop asking about those Epstein files” quite like casually floating war with Venezuela. And that’s after the rest of the shiny-object buffet: National Guard threats and deployments in blue cities, Greenland annexation proposals and that sudden pause of the diversity visa lottery. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of setting your kitchen on fire so nobody notices your bedroom is already burning.

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The problem is, Trumpworld also tried “transparency,” and somehow made that a distraction too. The Epstein files rollout was like watching someone attempt surgery with a chainsaw while blindfolded. If your goal is to quiet questions, maybe do not run the biggest scandal in America like a sloppy influencer “content drop.”

4. Best Bootlicking by a Federal Agency: The FCC

Remember when “independent agency” meant something? The FCC doesn’t. As its chair Brendan Carr was being grilled about the agency becoming Trump’s personal Yelp! review enforcement squad, including that attempt to silence late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, the agency quietly edited its own mission statement mid-hearing and deleted the word “independent.” If you are ever unsure whether an agency is under the thumb, watch it rewrite its own bio in real time.

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5. Most Casual War Crime Energy in an Email Thread: Pete Hegseth

Our Defense Secretary allegedly told a commander to “kill everybody” aboard a small vessel ferrying 11 people (and, allegedly, fentanyl) across the Caribbean. And there were probably typos in his message.

This was not a one-off slip. It came in the middle of the Trump administration’s war on “drug boats,” and specifically a “double tap” strike that has many lawmakers and legal experts arguing was illegal. It’s the kind of order that makes you wonder if Hegseth learned military strategy from a 13-year-old’s Call of Duty stream—which would explain the ‘no fatties, no facial hair’ fixation, too.

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6. Best ‘My Teenager Could Run National Security Better’ Moment: Pete Hegseth, again

Remember “Signalgate,” when senior defense leadership treated their group chat like a SCI (sensitive compartmented information) facility? The Pentagon Inspector General looked at Hegseth’s March 15 Signal messages and concluded he sent nonpublic operational details from his personal phone, including information tied to a U.S. strike timeline. If an adversary had intercepted it, the IG warned it could have endangered the mission and U.S. forces.

Hegseth responded like every guy caught texting during the exam, insisting it was “total exoneration” and “case closed.” Sure.

7. Best Miley Cyrus Karaoke Performance: The East Wing con- destruction crew.

It’s this “came in like a wrecking ball” moment, of course.

8. Most Freudian Slip at a Funeral: Erika Kirk

After Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, his widow Erika stepped up to run Turning Point USA. During a tribute, she accidentally said “grift” instead of “grit” while honoring her late husband. She caught herself immediately, but for one beautiful moment, the universe achieved perfect comedic timing. A less beautiful moment during Erika’s speech—for Usha Vance, at least? That hug.

9. Worst Choice of Words at the Worst Possible Time: Nicki Minaj

We’re not done with Turning Point just yet! Nicki Minaj’s 2025 MAGA makeover peaked at the organization’s AmericaFest conference, where she praised J.D. Vance onstage, except by calling him “the assassin.” Not “assassin” as in “killer,” but “assassin” as in “you’re lethal”—a wild compliment to land at an event honoring Charlie Kirk. Minaj froze. The room froze.

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Erika Kirk jumped in and smoothed it over like she had been trained for this exact moment in a hostage-negotiation simulator. Would you expect anything less from a pageant queen? But still.

10. Best Moment of Self-Immolation in an Already Burning Building: Susie Wiles

Winner: Susie Wiles

December was when Wiles decided to try being famous for exactly five minutes. After months of hiding behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz’s less charismatic cousin, she suddenly popped up with a leading lady’s role in THAT debacle of a Vanity Fair profile, telling the magazine that the famously-sober Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality”, among other quotes anyone with a lick of media training—which you would assume the White House Chief of Staff is on top of—would never dare drop on record

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Post-publication, she immediately screamed “hit piece!” and, wait for it, “fake news.” (The New York Times then confirmed Vanity Fair’s reporter had played them audio recordings of his interviews, including Wiles’ quotes.) Lady, YOU said it. The whole thing was like watching someone try to distance themselves from a wildfire while actively pouring gasoline on it. “Look how reasonable I am,” she says, standing in the flames, holding matches.

11. Most Audacious “Free Speech” Pivot: Bari Weiss

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Weiss spent years building a brand by scolding legacy media, then landed inside one of the biggest legacies of them all. And now it seems like she’s determined to tear it down. Earlier this month, she pulled a fully vetted 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan detainees sent to an El Salvadoran megaprison, then announced a top-down overhaul of CBS News standards and approvals. The message to the newsroom was clear: you can do all the reporting you want, but the real job is predicting what the bosses will find “too spicy” at the last minute.

12. Best Daily Press Briefing “Doublethink”: Karoline Leavitt

On Dec. 11, Leavitt stepped up to the podium to announce “good news” on the economy, then defended her case with cherry-picked numbers and a familiar move: when Kaitlan Collins tried to follow up, Leavitt pivoted to a lecture about how the press refuses to report “real, factual data.” Moments later, she delivered the purest Orwellian line of the year, insisting the administration had done more “for transparency” on Jeffrey Epstein than anyone. It is “transparency” defined as “you will accept our version of events and thank us for the privilege.”

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The White House this year also tightened reporters’ access to the “Upper Press” area near her office, requiring appointments and limiting the old hallway scrum that produces actual accountability.

STEALING CREDIT LEAVITT

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So here’s to 2025: the year that made 2020 look like a wellness weekend. If you’re exhausted, it just means you were paying attention. Congratulations to the winners, condolences to the rest of us, and see you next year when reality inevitably tries to top itself.

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