Some of you sickos have been waiting all year for this 🫶🏻
TPM’s 17th annual celebration of our beloved Golden Duke awards — the season when the TPM community comes together to celebrate those who gave us new highs (lows) in the field of public betrayal, political corruption, venality and nonsense — is special this year. Not only is it TPM’s 25th anniversary as an independent news outlet that grew out of our coverage of the George W. Bush administration’s lawlessness, but it is a special, albeit sad, year for those who have grown to love TPM’s annual toast to our nation’s most tenacious political trolls.
In the years since I’ve taken over TPM’s yearly commemoration of who best betrayed the public, I’ve found myself offering readers a similar caveat: the Golden Duke awards were created during an era when the corruption we catalogued was less rampant. Now that American political life has been overtaken by some of the worst people in the country (billionaire oligarchs and racist extremists who love political violence now literally run the government), the corruption at the core of the Golden Duke awards feels quaint.
This year’s awards do bring an important distinction, though. Duke Cunningham — the former congressman who accepted millions from defense contractors in exchange for lucrative federal government contracts and whose other scandalous misdeeds and sex parties amused us so greatly (more of the grisly details here), we decided to create a yearly tradition of saluting buffoonery in his honor — died in August of this year, at the age of 83. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
In memoriam, we’re switching things up. Instead of asking you, dear readers, to submit nominations for those delightfully corrupt public actors in each of the traditional categories (Best Scandal – General Interest, Best Scandal – Sex & Generalized Carnality, Best Scandal – Local Venue, Meritorious Achievement in the Crazy) we’re asking you to flood our submission form below ⤵️ with whoever you think deserves some accolades for acting disastrously this year, and why. The options are endless.
And in honor of TPM’s 25th anniversary, we will be giving away free 25th Anniversary hats and/or t-shirts to readers whose nominations we like best and choose to include when voting begins next week!
Submit your nominations for the 2025 Golden Duke awards below and may the Greatest Grifter win.