HOGGING THE SPOTLIGHT

These Were the Main Characters of Every Month in 2024

It’s been a great year for confessed dog killers, edgelord billionaires, and brain worm survivors everywhere.

January: Ron DeSantis

There really was a time when it looked like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might be a serious challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. In November 2022, Elon Musk said he’d support DeSantis, while Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post—which had dismissed Trump as “unworthy” of ever returning to the Oval Office—hailed DeSantis as “DeFuture” of the GOP.

The Florida governor’s rising star finally fell out of the firmament in January. Following a brutal 30-percentage point defeat to Trump in the Iowa caucuses, DeSantis dropped out on Jan. 21 after blowing tens of millions of dollars and enduring a humiliating, seemingly inexhaustible battery of name-calling from Trump throughout his campaign. DeSantis’ final flourish was immediately falling in line behind the man who’d spent months trying to get “DeSanctimonious” trending.

February: Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson was spotted in Moscow early in the month, prompting speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to grant his first interview with a Western media outlet since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And so it came to pass: The former Fox News star’s sitdown with Putin was released Feb. 8 on X.

Frost/Nixon it was not. Putin opened with a meandering, half-hour lecture on Russia’s history, which historians trashed and Carlson himself described as “annoying.” Perhaps sensing that his audience would not be all that interested in a rant about the Middle Ages and Prince Yaroslav the Wise, Carlson made repeated attempts to guide Putin away from whatever the hell the strongman felt like rambling about. Putin rebuffed Carlson’s interruptions and rattled off his grievances against the West unchallenged, leaving Carlson to spend most of the bizarre interview sitting in silence, wearing a bewildered expression.

Carlson’s trip to Russia led to accusations back home that he’d served as a useful idiot for the Kremlin. Even Putin expressed disappointment that Carlson had gone too easy on him.

March: Katie Britt

In these polarized times, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) achieved the unthinkable in March by bringing the nation together—in collective bafflement. Her Razzie Award-worthy delivery of the official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address from an eerily deserted kitchen was immediately denounced as disastrous by members of her own party who found it simultaneously melodramatic and unsettling—even before a sex-trafficking survivor accused Britt of having distorted her story for political purposes in the video.

Britt’s performance went viral for all the wrong reasons, and was even memorialized in a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Scarlett Johansson as the GOP senator.

April: Kristi Noem

Speaking of getting loads of attention for all the wrong reasons, enter Kristi Noem. The South Dakota governor’s appositely titled political memoir No Going Back created quite a buzz at the end of April—before the book was even published—when The Guardian reported the jaw-dropping claim that it contained a confession that she had once shot her dog dead in a gravel pit, an anecdote she seemingly included in the book to illustrate an ability to make difficult decisions.

The revelation about the killing of Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer, was met with a tsunami of bipartisan condemnation. Worse still for Noem was that it came at a time when she was presumably hoping to boost her popularity on the national stage as Trump was in the market for a running mate. She instead found herself defending the killing of Cricket—and an allegedly smelly goat—for months.

May: Stormy Daniels

In the arsenal of bombshell moments from Trump’s hush money trial in New York, none landed with more of a bang than when Stormy Daniels took the stand. The porn star’s claims of a one-night stand with Trump in 2006—and a $130,000 payment to buy her silence on the eve of the 2016 election—were at the heart of the case, which eventually led to Trump being found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, making him the first American president to be criminally convicted.

The shuddersome details relating to Trump’s choice of pajamas, deodorant, and bed position were horribly seared into the minds of all who heard them. Trump, of course, continues to deny ever having sex with Daniels.

June: Joe Biden

It’s fair to say June was a bad month for Biden. Early in the month, his son, Hunter, became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted on criminal charges after he was found guilty of lying about his drug use when he bought a gun in 2018. It went dramatically downhill from there.

On June 27, Biden took part in what proved to be his first and only presidential debate against Trump. The Democrat’s halting, befuddled performance ignited a firestorm in his party over his fitness for office. He ended his re-election campaign less than a month later.

July: Donald Trump

Trump was arguably the main character of every month in 2024, but the attention he received in July was enormous, even by his standards. On July 13, a gunman opened fire as Trump spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Before he was rushed off stage by Secret Service agents, photographers captured Trump with his fist in the air and blood pouring down his face in images that were published all over the planet.

The former president’s brush with death led to him receiving a quasi-religious reception at the Republican National Convention just days later, where attendees wore ear bandages in a surreal show of solidarity. It was also in July that Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case, the first of Trump’s federal criminal cases to fail to reach trial—but not the last.

August: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Prominent vaccine skeptic turned actual health and human services secretary-in-waiting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has similarly had quite the year. In May, it came out that doctors had once discovered a dead worm inside his brain, and he more recently found himself at the center of a salacious sexting scandal with a star political reporter.

It was in early August, however, that he was forced to admit he’d once dumped the carcass of a bear cub in New York City’s Central Park as a prank. Then, later in the month, he made headlines again by putting his bizarre presidential campaign out of its misery to fall in behind Trump—a man he’d slammed as a “terrible president” a month earlier—making his wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, “very uncomfortable” in the process. The whole sexting thing probably didn’t do much to patch things up.

September: Diddy

Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in a Manhattan hotel room on Sept. 16 and was denied bail the following day after he pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including sex trafficking. The arrest of one of the most high-profile figures in music came after months of mounting civil cases alleging various sexual misconduct and the publication of a shocking video showing him beating his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, in 2016.

Diddy continues to deny the charges against him. He’s set to remain behind bars until his trial, which is currently scheduled to begin in May.

October: Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history in October by spectacularly catching a giant rocket booster in mid-air as it returned to Earth. But the world’s richest man was more frequently mentioned in the news that month for other unprecedented, more personal milestones. Wearing a black MAGA cap, Musk appeared on stage with Trump for the first time—at his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—where he described the Republican as the sole candidate “to preserve democracy in America.” He also delighted his hordes of fans by doing a sort of star jump thing.

Their mutual affection has only deepened with Trump handing Musk a major role in his new administration, leading a fake department that may wield real influence to completely reshape the federal government.

November: Kamala Harris

After unexpectedly being parachuted in as the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris had 107 days to make her case to the nation. Even up to the eve of the election, polls were showing one of the closest races in U.S. history. At the voting booths on Nov. 5, the electorate had other ideas.

Harris’ defeat triggered angry finger-pointing and solemn soul-searching within the Democratic Party. However, in her concession speech, she struck a defiant tone when she urged her crestfallen supporters to “never give up.” Whether she’ll follow her own advice and mount another bid for the White House in 2028 remains to be seen.

December: Luigi Mangione

In the final month of 2024, the nation was gripped by the case of a CEO’s killing and his alleged killer. Brian Thompson, 50, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare—America’s largest health insurance company—was fatally shot by a masked gunman in the early hours of Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel. After a massive five-day search, police arrested Luigi Mangione—an Ivy League-educated 26-year-old—at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.

Mangione has since been charged with state murder and terror charges as well as federal charges, including a murder count, which could carry a death penalty. While prosecutors have accused Mangione of being a murderer bent on sowing terror, others have expressed sympathy and even outright support for his alleged actions over frustrations with the U.S. health insurance system.

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Dan Ladden-HallBreaking News Editor

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