One of my favorite moments in movie history is from a David Mamet light comedy (really!) from 2000 called State and Main. It's one of those movies that could never get made today, and not just because Alec Baldwin plays a charmingly roguish movie star with a taste for high school girls.
Driving drunk in the middle of the night in the small New England town where he's shooting a movie, Baldwin's character manages to flip his car right in front of his screenwriter, played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. When Hoffman pulls a smiling Baldwin out of the upside-down wreck, Baldwin just says, "So that happened."
I wouldn't say that 2025 was a car wreck — far from it! — but, man, it was a lot.
To give you an idea of just how much it was, remember that Donald Trump was re-sworn into office less than one year ago.
So here are the stories that caught my eye in 2025 — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Donald Trump
Trump dominated like few could, energetically and with purpose. The drift and 24/7/365 personnel crises that often dominated his first term were basically absent from Trump 47.1.
Take a deep breath before you read my brief(ish) summary of Trump's first 11 months back, because I don't know when he found time to breathe at all.
Trump tore into Big Government on Day One with a flurry of executive orders, ended the illegal immigration crisis with a look instead of a wall, restored the Monroe Doctrine, went to work on the odious Maduro regime, made it the Gulf of America, set the fastest-ever pace for deregulation, brokered ceasefires around the world, buried Iran's nuclear program under tons of rubble, in the process reminded Beijing and Moscow that the U.S. Air Force can still reach out and touch someone halfway around the world with complete impunity, resuscitated the Abraham Accords, went back-to-back with Bibi Netanyahu in the fight against Islamic terrorism, extended the American security umbrella over persecuted Christians in West Africa, made permanent his 2017 tax rates, stamped his name on our first new battleship design in eight decades, sicced Elon Musk and his DOGE boys on the NGO slush fund gravy train, and... look, I know I've forgotten half a dozen things of some importance, but that man is a machine.
I don't know how his people — all younger than he is — kept up.
My only real complaint is probably last on my Top Ten Priorities List: ending the Russo-Ukraine War. Trump's diplomatic efforts are certainly energetic enough (duh), and his tough-love approach to our European NATO partners finally has them taking their own defense more seriously. But having brought Zelensky to heel, Trump seems to think playing nice with Putin is the next step to peace. Sorry, Mr. President, but Putin must be brought to heel, too.
That quibble aside, I can't wait to see what Trump 47.2 brings.
Seriously, my jaded old self is thrilled for the new year.
AI
This was the year we finally got beyond the hype and learned what AI truly is.
It's a powerful but sometimes frustratingly limited and untrustworthy productivity tool. AI — at least as we know it — won't commit genocide against its human masters or solve the riddles of the universe. But it can, with careful supervision, make most people more productive. It can even turn imbeciles in the visual or musical arts, like myself, into third-rate creators.
All for about $20 a month, at least until the bubble pops and all those AI firms have to start returning profits instead of losing billions.
Where AI chatbots disappoint is in their obsequiousness, which I believe is how companies like OpenAI, Google, and X hope to keep users engaged. Where AI thrills is its ability to find, collate, and present information far better than any ordinary search engine can — provided you remember to double-check its work.
Plus, there's no Skynet... yet.
Disappointments
I'll take a brief break from my favorite stories to mention my three big disappointments for 2025.
The first was the mainstream media, which hit rock bottom in 2024, but this year brought out the dynamite and dug a hole to China, into which it dumped whatever shards remained of its reputation. Bari Weiss remains a potential bright spot, but thus far, still mostly potential.
Another is Apple's software side. This year's macOS 26 and iPadOS 26 releases have some great new features, but the "it just works" joy is gone due to confusing (and sometimes ugly) UI changes, and old apps/features that are inexplicably incomplete or broken. Despite each OS now being on the 26.2 version three months after their initial release, these still look and feel like beta products.
Candace, Tucker, and other so-called woke "conservatives" getting rich while trying to tear apart the movement.
And that's all I have to say about that, because I'm done giving them any oxygen... at least until 2026.
SpaceX
SpaceX set the pace in space once again, but also suffered serious frustrations.
The company first set an annual goal of 100 orbital launches in 2023, but just missed it. This year, SpaceX aimed high for 150 launches — and blew past it with 167. Most impressively (and much more importantly), SpaceX was responsible for roughly 90% of the mass put into orbit this year, and will likely beat both records again in '26. Getting mass into orbit is the entire point of the launch industry, and it's one company versus the world... and the world is losing badly.
The next revolution in launch technology is supposed to be another SpaceX vehicle, Starship. But after stellar developments in 2024, the Starship program suffered several setbacks — failed flight tests, engine tests gone BOOM, and the like — this year. Things got so bad before the company finally turned things around in October with a near-flawless Flight Test 11, that my paranoid side wondered if Musk had lost his touch, had his focus stolen by DOGE, or had been a victim of Chinese sabotage.
But then I remember the old adage: Space is hard.
Starship, if successfully developed, promises to be the most consequential vehicle in human history (so far), putting in human reach the riches of the inner Solar System — and beyond!
Heh.
Looking forward to Flight Test 12 early in '26.
Some of the Rest
We learned this year that the country's been robbed of trillions... I mean, the scale of the fraud makes Presidentish Joe Biden's various SPEND MOAR MONIES ACTS of 2021-22 look like stealing a few fives out of the petty cash drawer. But now we know, and the legal wheels begin to grind. Frustratingly slowly, sure, but they ought to grind fine.
Crime is way down, and remigration is way up — and as WKRP's Les Nessman announced the death of Bing Crosby, "First Elvis. Now Bing. Coincidence? I wonder."
The economy boomed, and Americans are winning back the jobs stolen by illegal aliens.
X can be a hot mess, and YouTube kinda sucks. But when a YouTuber can expose one of the biggest frauds in American history, then use X's (admittedly imperfect) free speech protections to find a much wider audience for REAL NEWS, there's something magical going on — something the Founders would have raised a musket to salute. You know, right before they drove medieval press guild members like Politico's Josh Gerstein into Canadian exile.
Then there are our VIP members — particularly Stephen Kruiser and my Five O'Clock Somewhere VIP Gold family — who make this job not only possible, but also a total joy.
So, yeah, 2025 happened. And it was a lot.
Want to see what happens in 2026?
I'll be here for all of it.
Also for Our VIPs: Trump's Big, Beautiful Battleships Are... What, Exactly?
