Biggest Assholios, 2024
And a couple heroes, for good measure
This week, we’re talking:
The biggest assholios of 2024 🍑🕳️
A few heroes for good measure 🦸🏻♀️ 🦸🏻♂️
Whether Biden will change the constitution on his way out the door 👨🏻🦳 📜
Guns are crossing the US-Mexico border… and Mexico has finally had enough 🇺🇸🔫 🇲🇽
The impact of raising the minimum wage wasn’t what opponents thought it would be 💸🍔
Why tortillas in the U.S. mostly suck — and some heroes trying to fix it 🌮🤢
How the G.O.P. might’ve got more than it bargained for with Elon Musk 🧑🏻🚀🐘
My Take:
Last year, I published a post on LinkedIn highlighting “The Biggest Assholios of 2023.” I wasn’t just slinging mud for the fun of it. I backed up my picks with reasons and sources. Still, that didn’t stop me from landing in LinkedIn jail. (Fun fact: LinkedIn jail doesn’t even come with a mugshot that you can monetize. What’s the point?)
That little stint is actually what brought me to Substack.
While LinkedIn jail gave me the push, one year in, I’ve gotta say—I genuinely like it here. I love the freedom to say what I want without arbitrary censorship, and I love being able to use multiple links and go long when inspiration strikes. So, here’s a big thanks to all of you, my small but mighty gaggle of devoted readers.
2025 is shaping up to be a roller coaster, but at least we’ll be getting whiplash together.
And now, without further ado, I present the second annual: Biggest Assholios and Heroes of 2024.
Peter Thiel – The Silicon Valley Svengali
In 2024, Thiel proved he’s playing seven-dimensional chess while the rest of us are stuck on checkers. Big ups to you, Peter.
His biggest move? Sliding one of his interns, JD Vance, just one Big Mac away from the highest office in the land.
With Vance secured, Thiel didn’t just cement his ideological vision, he positioned himself for enormous personal gain. Without ever winning, let alone running, for any public office, he managed to rig the entire political system in his favor. That’s not democracy; that’s oligarchy, on its way to kleptocracy.
Elon Musk – The Misinformation Musketeer
A veteran of this list, Musk might’ve outdone himself this year. Elon has long proven himself to have erratic judgment and an unquenchable thirst for attention, but endorsing Trump mere moments after the President-elect suffered an attempted assassination was, as the kids say, not on my bingo card. His 680x return on his investment in the Trump Presidency, with a hard-dollar increase of $170 billion in his personal net worth since Trump’s election, has to be the most profitable investment of all time.
The soon-to-be First Buddy (his own term for his relationship with Trump) fell down the conspiracy rabbit hole and dragged all of the internet with him through his ownership of X. All the while, he kept Tesla workers trapped in anti-union purgatory and found time to cozy up to Putin and Xi.
Vivek Ramaswamy – The Hype Grifter
Another veteran of this list (called it!) Vivek Ramaswamy spent 2024 proving he could sell sand in the desert. The biotech entrepreneur turned political disruptor mastered the art of turning populist soundbites and Silicon Valley doublespeak into a polished, self-serving spectacle.
Ramaswamy’s campaign combined empty contrarianism with a knack for saying just enough to enrage everyone, from progressives to conservatives, while never actually committing to a position. Whether dismissing climate change as a “hoax” or trying to position himself as a younger, tech-savvy Trump understudy, Ramaswamy didn’t run for office in 2024 as much as he auditioned for whatever role might make him the most money and attention next. And man, did he land it.
Still, he’s not a politician, he’s a product. And the packaging is louder than what’s inside.
Anita Dunn -- The Puppet Master
One might think this slot should go to President Joe Biden himself, but if you ever saw him at the top of his game, you know just how cognitively diminished he is.
There’s no shortage of blame to go around, but Anita Dunn ranks near the top of my list. She should've ensured that Biden was a one-term President. Instead, while the Middle East burned, inflation persisted, and Biden’s approval hit historic lows, Dunn and her crew remade Weekend at Bernie's with an aviator-heavy twist. As if that wasn't egregious enough, she relied on messaging so bumbling that it somehow managed to alienate progressives, independents, and conservatives all at once.
In 2024, she didn’t just torch Joe Biden’s legacy; she might have tanked the whole GD American experiment in the process.
The Supreme Court – The Untouchables
As the meme goes, “I’ve eaten crunch wraps more supreme than this Court.” And yes, technically, this isn’t just one person—but I’m taking a page out of their book and rewriting the rules to serve myself.
The Supreme Court always hands down controversial decisions, but this year the Court found itself broiled in controversy. Not just for rolling back protections that have stood for decades or for interpreting the Constitution as a document meant to protect corporations over people, but for the conduct of the justices themselves.
Justice Clarence Thomas has been raking in lavish, undisclosed gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow, including extravagant vacations via Crow’s private plane and mega-yacht, in exchange for—one might reasonably assume—preferential treatment in decisions impacting Crow’s bottom line. Even in spite of this glaring rot, the Court refuses to adopt, let alone adhere to, any kind of ethics code.
In 2024, the Court gave itself more power and less accountability, a recipe for disaster in the years to come.
Now, I don’t want anybody to think I’m a Scrooge, so if you need a glimmer of hope in these trying times, I present two people to remind you that even amidst all the assholios, there are real-life heroes among us:
Ian Bassin – The Visionary Protector
Ian Bassin and Protect Democracy stand out in 2024 not for any single headline-grabbing moment (though there were plenty), but for something even more remarkable: they saw the storm coming long before the skies darkened. While most downplayed the risks of an authoritarian movement seizing power in America, Protect Democracy built a roadmap to counter it—practical, cross-ideological, and deeply rooted in the principles of democracy itself.
When others were dismissing the danger or scrambling for their own survival, Protect Democracy was laying groundwork. Now, with billionaires and media empires caught off guard, Bassin and his team stand at the forefront of the fight to preserve the best of the American experiment for the next generation.
Iliana Pérez – The Architect of Empowerment
Iliana Pérez doesn’t just talk about breaking down barriers, she shows up with a sledgehammer to get shit done. In 2024, Pérez and Immigrants Rising scored a major victory with AB 2543, a bill that finally lets undocumented entrepreneurs compete on a level playing field. With small business certification now in reach, these entrepreneurs can access state contracts and bidding preferences that were previously off-limits.
But Pérez didn’t stop there. Immigrants Rising launched the SEED Marketplace, giving immigrant entrepreneurs a platform to showcase and sell their products, and handed out $1.5 million in microgrants to fund everything from equipment upgrades to marketing campaigns. Workshops covered everything from accounting to legal compliance, because building a business takes more than just grit; it takes know-how.
In a state that too often overlooks the potential of its immigrant communities, Pérez and her team are showing what’s possible when the right tools and opportunities come together. Call it empowerment or call it good business. Either way, she’s making California stronger.
Who am I missing? Let me know what you think.
Around the Web:
Damming the "iron river": Mexico's legal battle to stop gun trafficking from the U.S via CBS News 🇺🇸🔫🇲🇽
There's been a lot of talk about stopping the flow of illegal immigration and drugs from Mexico. But few people are talking about another crisis at the border…guns. Specifically, American guns. An estimated 200,000 to half million U.S. firearms are smuggled into Mexico every year —part of what's known as the "iron river." Mexico says those American guns are responsible for much of the cartel violence that's plagued its country…. and now… it's taking an unusual approach to try and stop it…. it's suing. The government of Mexico has filed lawsuits in U.S. courts against a handful of gun stores and one of the largest gun manufacturers in America.
The California Job-Killer That Wasn’t via The Atlantic💸🍔
The first rule of social science is that correlation does not equal causation. Many factors could affect fast-food employment in California—positively or negatively—that have nothing to do with the minimum wage. That’s why, in a recent paper, a pair of economists from UC Berkeley compared employment for California fast-food workers with that of similar workers in states that still abide by the $7.25 federal minimum wage. The authors found that employment for the two groups was on roughly the same trajectory prior to the April wage increase, but that, since then, California’s fast-food employment had actually grown slightly faster than the other states’. (The authors also shared a not-yet-released analysis showing that these results hold when adjusting for seasonal effects and using alternative sources of data.) “These findings were a bit surprising even to me,” Michael Reich, one of the paper’s co-authors, who has published more than a dozen studies on the effect of minimum-wage laws, told me. Another report, from a different set of academic researchers, found that the new minimum wage had not resulted in a reduction in hours or a rollback of benefits, either.
How Tortillas Lost Their Magic via The Atlantic 🌮🤢
Optimization for cost and convenience has made the average tortilla more redolent of cardboard than corn, designed not for flavor but to encase delicious fillings. But a growing group of chefs, restaurants, and companies are hoping to change that, to usher in a wave of masa made from single-origin, heirloom corn that restores the sanctity of Mexican culinary stalwarts such as tortillas and tamales.
The G.O.P.’s Elon Musk Problem via The New Yorker 🧑🏻🚀🐘
On Friday, the crisis over the continuing resolution suddenly abated. By midday, Johnson had a new gambit, Plan C, in which government spending would be extended three months with some of the extraneous elements of the bill stripped out, and without the change to the debt ceiling that Trump and Vance had wanted. Reporters waited in a chilly Capitol for the Speaker to reveal whether they could go home for the holidays (“The Rotunda is 10 degrees colder than anywhere else in Washington,” the veteran Hill scribe John Bresnahan groused); the news was good, and they could leave. What had been accomplished, for all this drama? A few tiny, temporary cuts to programs, and the introduction of a potential new center of power in Washington. Johnson survived as Speaker, for now. Once the votes had been cast, Musk wrote on X, “The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances.” But the Tesla billionaire didn’t mention that the main circumstance had been himself.
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