Al’s Year-End Tea: Welcome to the 2024 Golden Teacup Awards!
Welcome back in for Al’s New Year’s Tea, and our Golden Teacup Awards — our way of honoring some of the most memorable, madcap, and misguided people of 2024.
Golden Teacup for Former President of the Year
The competition was fierce this year. Fortunately for the honorable gentleman from Plains, Jimmy Carter did become the first president to live to the age of 100 — long enough to hand over his title of Worst President of the Modern Age, so he withdrew from consideration before passing away on Sunday.
Bill Clinton ends the year regretting ever meeting Jeffrey Epstein and fearing the worst, should all be revealed. He also witnessed the moderate Democratic Party over which he once presided turned completely over to groomers, terrorist-sympathizers, and drag queens. Meanwhile, George W. Bush saw the elitist Republican Party of the Bushes and Cheneys fully taken over by Donald Trump and his populist MAGA Army.
However, this year’s Golden Teacup Award goes to former President Barack Obama. Mr. “Hope and Change” fully exposed his true identity as Mr. Bitterness and Division. His lecturing of black men who wanted no part of a potential Kamala Harris presidency fell flatter than a piece of tin foil that’s been ironed out and run over by a dump truck. His dream of “fundamentally transforming America” was trampled in the stampede to “Make America Great Again.” Poor guy. Imagine having such a high opinion of yourself, but nobody any longer caring to hear your opinion.
Honorable Mention goes to Joe Biden. He hasn’t even waited until leaving office to act like a former president. He’s been such a ghost since the election that the White House will soon be featured on an upcoming episode of Haunted Homes.
Golden Teacup for Animals of the Year
The Golden Teacup — with an extra few treats thrown in — goes to the cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio, whose sacrifice at the hands of Haitian “newcomers” brought in by the Biden-Harris administration helped highlight the devastation of its open border policies. Honorable Mention goes to the ducks and geese that used to live in the city’s public parks before the Haitians consumed them.
Golden Teacup for Political Strategist of the Year
Hands down, this Golden Teacup Award is shared by anyone who advised Joe Biden, and then Kamala Harris, about anything to do with either one of their campaigns. That includes the stylist who decided Harris should almost always wear brown.
All these pros who were paid millions upon millions of dollars got their clocks cleaned by a long-haired, 6’5” voter registration guru named Scott Presler and a 6’9” college freshman named Barron Trump.
The 18-year-old’s advice to his father was head and shoulders above anything advisors told Biden or Harris. (Not exactly the highest bar to beat, but still impressive.) According to his mother, Melania, Barron was “very vocal” in pushing Trump to appear on podcasts that are popular with young males, including Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, Logan Paul, and Joe Rogan.
This push helped Trump make serious gains with voters under 30, particularly men.
However, on second thought, Barron’s feat is not as impressive as Harris’s people managing to blow through a billion dollars in just a couple of months, only to see virtually every county in America turn redder.
Golden Teacup for Bumbling Bureaucrats of the Year
Thank God we can make light of this award, because the winning bureaucrat’s bumbling came a couple of millimeters and fractions of a second within causing a national calamity.
The Golden Teacup for Individual Performance goes to former United States Secret Service Director Kathryn Cheadle. A close friend of Jill Biden, Cheadle watched the Secret Service’s standards disintegrate under operational malaise and her heavy-handed DEI efforts. Warnings from veteran agents earlier in the year were ignored, and on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, incompetence and indifference resulted in Trump getting shot.
To make matters worse, Cheadle declared that agents were not covering the shooter’s very obvious and very close vantage point because the roof was too steeply slanted — a roof even Joe Biden could manage. Cheadle quickly was forced to resign.
The Golden Teacup Award for Group Performance goes to FEMA. Not simply for the apparent disinterest in helping people in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, or its efforts to block those who were trying to help, but also for deliberately refusing to offer assistance to hurricane victims in Florida who had Trump signs or banners in their yards.
All which gets us to this award …
Golden Teacup for Catastrophic Cabinet Member of the Year (if Not the Century)
Name three of the year’s most egregious, most reckless, most indifferent federal government screw-ups of 2024: The Illegal Immigrant Invasion, the Bungled Secret Service Operation in Butler, and FEMA’s Response to Hurricane Helene.
At the top of the chain of command for all three sits Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who also was impeached by the House of Representatives for deliberately ignoring federal law in order to facilitate the placement of millions of illegal immigrants in our country. The sinister Mayorkas also managed to lose 300,000 unaccompanied minors to God knows what horrific fate.
For all that, Mayorkas gets a super-sized Golden Teacup.
Being hopeless romantics, we could not leave without one final award. Cue the orchestra and “If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right.”
Golden Teacup for Couple of the Year
At the beginning of 2024, pop queen Taylor Swift and NFL great Travis Kelce were heavy favorites for couple of the year. Not only was she the biggest entertainer on the planet, conventional wisdom held that Swift was going to single-handedly drag Joe Biden to victory in November. Though the couple is still together, Swift stayed mostly silent during the presidential campaign, and the support she did show Kamala Harris alienated a number of her fans.
So the Golden Teacup goes to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her lover, special prosecutor Nathan Wade. The two managed to turn the election case against Trump in Georgia into an entertaining soap opera. Who will forget Willis’s belligerent appearance at court in her own defense against charges that her relationship with Wade gave the appearance of impropriety? Or poor Wade, caught between not wanting to perjure himself about when their relationship started and not wanting to face the wrath of Willis when he got home.
In March, Wade was forced to resign. And earlier this month, Willis herself was unceremoniously tossed off the case. Technically, the case against Trump and his codefendants still exists, but in practical terms, the Willis-Wade affair destroyed it. It’s another victory for Trump in the Great Lawfare Wars. But will Fani and Nathan find romantic bliss amid the wreckage?
Honorable Mention: Jill Biden and Donald Trump. From her wearing MAGA red on Election Day to making goo-goo eyes at him at the reopening of Notre Dame, Dr. Jill made like she was crushing on the Orange Man. Or was the former first lady just happy to have Trump stomp all over Kamala Harris?
On the Stream Menu…
Our eyes are already on the new year here at The Stream. In that vein, Wanda Alger has “A Word for 2025: Recalibrate.”
And Shane Idleman tells us about“Fasting in 2025: Pressure Must Be Maintained Before There Is Breakthrough.”
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.