On January 1, 2020, no one knew that Baby New Year would grow to be the most despised character of the year 366 days later.
A lot of real people qualify for the list – far too many to include – but we tried to narrow down the candidates to those who best characterize the loathsomeness of the year and its events.
One caveat: the most obvious choices, Donald Trump and his family of grifter clowns, aren’t included because, frankly, they’re too obvious. If you put together a list for every negative adjective – hated, ignorant, drug addled, fashion challenged – the Trumps would fill the list.
No one captures the violence and the faux authority exhibited by Trump’s horde of ignorant, self-important Trump supporters than Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who crossed state lines, illegally had a friend in Wisconsin buy a AR-15 for him, and went to Kenosha to play mall cop/superhero. He ended up shooting three people, killing two of them, in an incident stemming from his desire to be a hero. In the personification of white privilege, as an armed Rittenhouse walked toward police officers after killing two and with people screaming at the (real) cops that he had just shot multiple people, the police whizzed by him and let him go.
He returned to Illinois. It wasn’t until the following day that he turned himself to police. There was no raid on his house. No confronting the barrel of a police officer’s rifle. And not even a knock at his door.
Rittenhouse claims that he shot three people because he feared for his safety, even though two of the people he shot were unarmed and – here’s an important part – he went to Kenosha with an illegally purchased weapon claiming that he wanted to defend the peace.
At one point, our next nominee was a member of the Elite Strike Force Team of legal, um, “geniuses” who are trying to disenfranchise millions of American voters. But Sidney Powell stands alone among the rest for her false claims that the election was undermined by a melange of George Soros, Democrats and Hugo Chavez (who has been dead for five years) using money coming from China, Cuba and Venezuela to manipulate Dominion voting machines, which are pre-programmed (apparently at the order of the dead Chavez) to discount votes for Trump and inflate votes for President-elect Joe Biden because Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic teamed up to sabotage the election (even though Smartmatic was only used in one US county).
Using precise geometric logic that would make Captain Queeg blush, Powell has secured the services of a Trump-supporting podcaster named Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman who falsely claims she’s a military contractor and a doctor who’s backstory is so unbelievable even she claims, “People like me don’t exist.” Oh, and her “military intelligence expert,” a man named Joshua Merritt, never actually worked in military intelligence, but was a motor pool mechanic in the Army.
Somehow, this was even too much for Trump and and the dye-dripping Rudy Giuliani, who dismissed Powell even though she promised to “unleash the Kraken” in a series of lawsuits – all of which she lost. In fact, Trump’s legal team to date has won just one post-election lawsuit, and a minor one at that. They’ve lost at least 59 and they’ve made a joke of the Trump campaign. Unfortunately, they’ve got enough traction of attract millions of election-denying Trumpians to subvert the Constitution.
And what would 2020 be without QAnon, particularly Marjorie Taylor Greene, the soon-to-be Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14th District, who is perhaps the most loathsome individual to be elected to Congress in a generation. (And I say this knowing that Louie Gohmert, Steve King and Ted Cruz are all in Congress.)
Greene has fully embraced QAnon, from the debunked Satan-worshipping pedophilia ring operating out of the basement of Georgetown pizza parlor that doesn’t have a basement; to claiming that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib’s election to Congress marked an Islamic overthrown of the Constitution (or is it Jews or Blacks?); to George Soros being a Nazi. On top of the typical QAnonsense, she’s a 9/11 denier, saying that a plane didn’t crash into the Pentagon in a false flag operation by Neocons to get us into a war.
Greene has posted memes in which she’s holding an AR-15 and threatening The Squad, which was condemned as a violent threat by both Democratic and Republicans members of the House. And of course, she’s embraced the lies that Donald Trump–her one true savior who is the only one who can deliver the United States from the dangers of Marxist liberal socialism–who’s being cheated from his rightful win in the 2020 election by Deep State operatives, who may or may not include his own Attorney General.
The kicker: Greene took a $450,000 PPP loan from the construction company she owns and allegedly used the money for her campaign. But, hey…. socialism.
Next up on the list is the personification of Trump entitlement: Jerry Falwell, Jr. The son of a preacher man, Falwell created his own little principality in Liberty University. He could demand his students, faculty and staff live by a set of hyper-puritanical rules that he and his friends were exempt from.
His downfall was long coming: first being photographed at a club with his wife, then posting multiple photos on line with him enjoying elite vacations around the world with his family and friends on the private yachts of donors, from whom he collected hundreds of millions of dollars.
Amazingly, a sexual scandal didn’t bring him down. Farwell was rumored to have been in a cuckold arrangement with a pool boy, who would, um, engage with Falwell’s wife while Jerry sat in a corner and watched. He even loaned money to the pool boy to start a hostel for gay men in Miami, a venture that went belly up.
No, what brought Farwell down was a photo: a picture taken aboard a donor’s yacht during a vacation, which depicted Falwell with his arm around his wife’s assistant, the zipper on his pants undone and a glass of a dark liquid resembling liquor in his hand. (Oh, the Devil Liquor has been the downfall of many a just man… and Jerry Falwell, Jr. too.)
That was the straw the broke the proverbial camel’s back. Suddenly, the misuse of University funds was too much. The endorsement of a thrice-married failed casino owner and noted corrupt businessman was too much. The personal enrichment from a religious college was too much. The hypocrisy was… well, that was tolerated because they’re evangelicals after all: “the rules are for thee but not for me.” But a photo of him in unzipped pants with a woman who’s not his wife! Enough!
Of course, Falwell sued Liberty University for wrongful termination. He quietly withdrew his lawsuit earlier this month.
But NatZero’s choice for the Most Loathsome Person of 2020 belongs to: the 2020 Trump voters.
Honestly, this was initially a rare point of disagreement between Spartan and me. My initial thought was that including all Trump voters was too broad a brush.
But Spartan made a persuasive argument. In 2016, you could make a rational argument that many Trump voters truly hoped that Trump would be a change agent, that no matter how unfit for office he was, they truly believed that Trump could change a flawed system for the better by his unorthodox management style. Most of us, of course, knew this would never be, but in 2016, there were many who voted for him with this false, but hopeful, vision.
You can’t make that same argument in 2020, though. In 2020, we had had four years of his management style, which has led to 330,000 dead and 20 million infected with the coronavirus. His management style led to a $3.1 trillion deficit. It led to millions unemployed, a pandemic sweeping the country, and a feckless federal government unable and unwilling to help stem the spread–even after vaccines were developed.
Trump has not just fostered the divisions in our country, he has encouraged them. He has encourage violent extremist groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys (my choices for the top spot). He has rejoiced in the chaos he’s caused and continues to cause.
As Trump sat in the Oval Office mocking those wanting to hold him to account, he has undermined our democratic process and worked to subvert the Constitution. He continues to subvert the very fabric of our nation by encouraging the whacked-out fringe of the GOP to deny the results of the election–all for his ego… and his wallet.
He openly advocated for Russian interests and demeaned our national security professionals. He denied reports from not just our intelligence community about Russian actions to launch him into office, he demeaned a report written by Republicans in the Senate. He removed the United States from leadership positions worldwide.
Trump used our Office of the President of the United States to cover up crimes, obstruct justice, and use foreign contact to enrich himself and his children. He used the position as a marketing arm for his hotels and his golf courses. He cheapened the office and removed its dignity.
And these people voted for him.
After four years of chaos and destruction; after four years of degrading the Constitution and the United States; after four years of lying to the American people, 74 million people STILL voted for him. There were no pie-in-the-sky hopes that he’ll just be a different kind of leader; you knew what you were going to get.
And these people still voted for him.
There’s no telling how long Trump’s toxicity will last in American politics. It took republicans just two years to unperson George W. Bush. But with his children and in-laws talking about runs for office themselves in coming years, we should ask one question:
Will they vote for them?