The Trumpys

By Martin H. Levinson

Welcome to the inaugural Trumpy Awards Show, the only awards show where winning means you should probably be under investigation, and losing means you might have a conscience. Named in honor of the smartest, most honest, and entertainingness person ever to have been elected to public office, the show’s golden trophy—a cup containing the speed-dials of America’s highest-priced defense attorneys—celebrates those who have successfully replaced governance with pure, unadulterated performance art.

Below is the official program for tonight’s ceremony, which honors the absolute worst and most shameless figures on the current political scene.

🏆 Category 1: The “Far-Right Taking Care of Business” Award

For incumbents who have drifted so far right, they have successfully exited the traditional political spectrum and entered a parallel universe.

• The Nominees:

• Governor Con DeGrantis, who outlawed standard weather forecasting because meteorology sounds too much like “woke astrology.”

• • Senator Fed Cruz, who proposed replacing high school PE classes with mandatory viewings of superhero movies to “restore alpha energy.”
  • Representative Marjorie Taylor Mean, a reactionary who ran on a platform of turning the southern border into an alligator-filled moat funded entirely by a crypto rug pull.
• And the Trumpy goes to… The Weather Governor. Because nothing says “conservative values” like threatening to arrest a low-pressure system for crossing state lines without government-issued ID.

🏆 Category 2: The “Commune Commander” Award

For the left-wing pol whose platform is so assertively progressive, it reads like a manifesto written by Karl Marx and Che Guevera on a day when they had nothing to eat or drink but carbon-negative cricket bark and soy lattes.

• The Nominees:
  • City council member Kum Ba Ya, who proposed replacing the police force with a fleet of “De-escalation Therapy Dogs.”
  • Congresswomen AOC-DEFGHIJKLMNOP, who is in favor of banning the letters “X” and “Y” from the alphabet because they represents “predatory algebraic capitalism.”
  • Mayor Zohran Tsunami, who successfully passed an ordinance making it illegal for landlords to raise rents without providing  trigger warnings and free medical insurance to their tenants.

• And the Trumpy goes to…The Therapy-Dog Visionary. The committee commends his innovatory idea, though we regret to report the first deployment ended with the suspects feeding the dogs Kibbles ’n Bits and stealing a squad car.

🏆 Category 3: The “Grifts ‘R’ Us” Award

For government officials who view public service not as a duty, but as a highly lucrative venture capital scheme with no legal oversight.

• The Nominees:
  • Bernie Tradeoff, the Comptroller from the Great State of Financial Agitation, who accidentally routed the state’s entire highway fund into his spouse’s “Karma Debt Collection, LLC.”
  • Skip Inspection, the head of a major municipal housing department, who traded three zoning permits for a lifetime supply of white gold caviar and a yacht named Off the Record.
  • Miles Behind, a Transit Authority chief who sold the naming rights of his city’s subway system to an energy drink corporation, which branded it “The Red Bull Transit System.”
• And the Trumpy goes to… The Comptroller. When asked about the highway funds during a grand jury hearing, he claimed the money was a way to “pay it forward,” albeit in a slightly different sense in which that phrase is normally used.

🏆 Category 4: The “Zero Aptitude” Award

For the politician who has demonstrated what can only be termed a complete lack of talent for government work.

• The Nominees:
  • Treasury Secretary Harold Huckster, who tried to curb inflation by printing more money, but on thicker, “more plush-feeling” paper so it felt more valuable.
  • City-Supervisor Quid Pro QuoLan, who went on vacation during a historic blizzard and left a cardboard cutout of himself at city hall along with a recording saying: “Conditions are treacherous out there, stay off the roads!”
  • Congressional Representative George Rantos, who introduced 52 bills when he was in office, all of them about making lying an acceptable way to conduct government business.
• And the Trumpy goes to… The Plush Paper Treasury Secretary. Economy tanked, but the citizens agreed the hyper-inflated banknotes made great substitutes for toilet paper.

🏆 Category 5: Lifetime Achievement in Optimizing Inertia

For the politician who has done absolutely nothing of substance, but has survived entirely on creating imaginary crises and then fundraising off them.

• And the Trumpy goes to… The Entire Legislative Branch. A rare group win! We honor your collective ability to spend weeks debating whether a tweet constitutes a declaration of war, while the roof of the capitol building is held together by rolls of duct tape.