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2025 had no shortage of political losers who saw their influence wane. Here are some of the year’s biggest political losers.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) should have been one of the year’s biggest winners. She had positioned herself as one of the faces of President Donald Trump’s “MAGA” movement. Trump’s 2024 victory should have supercharged her political career. Greene’s problem, though, was that she was only popular among MAGA, and her appeal was nearly nonexistent outside of die-hard Republicans.

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So, when Greene tried to run for Senate in Georgia, Trump’s team commissioned a poll showing her losing (in a landslide) to Democrat Jon Ossoff. Trump privately scuttled Greene’s ambitions. She responded by lashing out at him and Republicans with Democratic talking points. Trump trashed her on social media and effectively nuked any future for Greene in Republican politics. She chose to resign from the House, effective early 2026.

Greene now spends her days pushing Palestinian propaganda and praising Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicholas Maduro, all while pretending that she is more “America first” than Trump. Greene was always toxic outside of her deep-red congressional district. She will undoubtedly pop up on some anti-conservative, faux-patriotic media network, such as Tucker Carlson’s, a far cry from the Senate seat she planned on running for at the beginning of the year.

Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo resigned from the governor’s office in New York in disgrace in 2021, after sexual harassment accusations and a cover-up of the nursing home COVID-19 deaths that his terrible policies caused during the pandemic. With New York City Mayor Eric Adams embroiled in his own scandals, Cuomo finally launched his redemption tour with a run for the mayor’s office.

It failed miserably. Cuomo was drubbed by communist Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and then decided to jump into the general election as an independent candidate. Cuomo lost that too, leaving New York in the hands of Mamdani and sending his political career into retirement.

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Trump’s tariffs

Trump won the White House largely because of Biden’s economy. Voters blamed Joe Biden and, by extension, Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, for inflation. They also remembered that Trump’s economy was humming right up until the global pandemic.

But Trump’s obsession with tariffs is ruining all that GOP goodwill on the economy. Voters still aren’t happy with high prices, with over 70% saying they are paying more for groceries this year than last. Now, 62% of them blame the state of the economy on Trump’s policies, chiefly the tariffs that are keeping costs higher than they otherwise would be. Trump costing the GOP ground on the economy helped sink Virginia Republicans in their 2025 elections, and it will be hanging over Republicans for the 2026 midterm elections so long as Trump continues to make tariffs a focal point of his administration.

The 2024 Democratic presidential ticket

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, both lost in 2024, but their losing streaks continued into 2025 as well.

Harris’s excuse-ridden book tour has been a flop, where she proved that she still has contempt for Americans as racist bigots. Harris claimed in her book that she did not want to choose then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate because she thought it would be too much to ask Americans to vote for a black woman (with a Jewish husband) and a gay man on the same ticket.

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Walz, meanwhile, has become embroiled in a statewide fraud scandal involving the state’s Somali community. Walz has become the face of government incompetence as his state has been defrauded of hundreds of millions in COVID-19, housing, and autism funds. This comes after months of Walz trying to rebrand himself as a tough guy, promising to fight Trump supporters and promising his own supporters that they can one day celebrate Trump dying.

Both Harris and Walz missed their chance to go down in history last year, and they have spent this past year proving that their lack of political talent is the only thing to blame.

California

California has one bit of good news: 2026 will be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s last year in office. Newsom is term-limited and wants to run for president, where he would export California’s failed policies to the rest of the nation. That is where the good news ends for California.

Under Newsom’s stewardship, California is facing budget deficits for years into the future. California businesses will now face a new tax on employees as a result of Newsom failing to repay a federal pandemic unemployment loan. California has a looming energy crisis and an ever-worsening affordability crisis. Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have both failed to rebuild Los Angeles in a timely manner after the city suffered widespread fires in January.

To top it all off, for anyone who thinks things cannot get worse in California, the top Democrat in polling right now to replace Newsom is the one and only Rep. Eric Swalwell. 

Late-night “comedy”

Late-night comedy shows have been a dying format for a decade, driven by alternative media and by the fact that most late night “comedians” were political activists.

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The death of late-night comedy accelerated this year. CBS was, for some reason, paying Stephen Colbert a reported $20 million per year for a show that, for some reason, cost $130 million to produce each year. Colbert’s show was losing $40 million per year and was pulling fewer viewers than Greg Gutfeld was pulling on Fox News at a fraction of the cost. Rather than fire Colbert and try to take The Late Show in a different direction, CBS decided it would be easier to cancel the show entirely, with last year being the final one for the franchise that started in 1993.

Jimmy Kimmel of ABC then earned himself a short suspension after Charlie Kirk was killed by a left-wing terrorist. Kimmel got on air and lied to his audience, claiming that Trump supporters were “trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” Kimmel was, of course, feeding into a conspiracy theory that Kirk was shot by some right-wing radical, something he still hasn’t apologized for to this day. Like Colbert, Kimmel has given up on comedy in favor of ranting about fascism, which is what he blamed for his suspension.