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WILD RIDE: Here are the top 10 stories of 2025
2025 was a year for the history books, and BlazeTV host Steve Deace and executive producer Aaron McIntire have the top 10 stories that made this year so unforgettable.
Story number 10, McIntire announces, was the Democrats’ 43-day government shutdown that lasted over a month and kept Americans across the country terrified of losing their SNAP benefits.
“The media was happy to act as if a shutdown wasn’t actually happening for well over a month from October 1 till its conclusion in the middle of November, with a deal Democrats had previously turned down on numerous occasions in the process,” McIntire says. “Which begs the question: If a government shuts down and nobody noticed it, is it really a shutdown at all?”
Next on the list at Number 9 is the “Department of Crashout Efficiency.”
“Much had been made, probably rightfully so, about the role tech magnate Elon Musk played in the election of President Trump back in 2024. With the inauguration of Trump came the ceremonial creation of the Department of Government Efficiency,” McIntire explains, pointing out that this new entity discovered “reams upon reams of nearly unfathomable graft, corruption, and abuse.”
“But the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, went from being a fixture in the news for much of the spring to now being relegated to ghost or legend status depending on whom you ask,” he continues.
Number 8, McIntire says, is the “election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of the nation’s largest city.”
“New York City, in less than a generation after the largest Islamic terror attack of the 21st century struck it to its core … turned around and elected an Islamist to lead it,” McIntire says.
Number 7 is Trump’s hard stance on immigration, with deportations not appearing to be slowing down any time soon.
“The official numbers of how many foreigners have left the country is generally up for debate. But one thing that’s not is that the deportations must continue until morale improves,” McIntire says.
Number 6 is “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
“On June 22, and in conjunction with Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against Iran, the United States carried out what is likely the most technologically and logistically sophisticated air operation in the history of warfare,” McIntire says.
“The stunning operation not only sent a message to Iran, but every would-be enemy of the United States,” he adds.
Number 5 centers around the passing of Pope Francis, which led to the selection of a new pope on May 8.
“They shocked the world by selecting the first pope born in the United States,” McIntire says. Deace chimes in that the new Pope, Pope Leo, is “already worse than Francis.”
Number 4 is Liberation Day.
“On April 2, the Trump administration declared Liberation Day and enacted a series of tariffs on basically every continent, every land mass, every tiny little island in the middle of nowhere under the sun,” McIntire explains.
“The administration sold those sweeping tariffs as a way to grow government revenue and/or leverage for better trade deals,” he adds.
Number 3 is what McIntire calls “Trump 2.0,” which is the beginning of Trump’s second term, and Number 2 is the “future of the right” — which McIntire and Deace believe has fractured after major conservatives like Tucker Carlson have platformed, and essentially celebrated, voices they see as destructive to the right.
“What’s left to be determined is whether this is a movement going through growing pains, or a stillbirth,” McIntire says, before reading Number 1.
“Number one story of the year is Charlie Kirk, the American martyr,” McIntire says. “His murder that everyone saw prompted a number of moving tributes, including one of the best, I thought, from the White House.”
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The DEI era is ending — and America’s elite institutions may be dying with it
The reign of diversity, equity, and inclusion over America’s elite institutions is coming to an end — and BlazeTV hosts Christopher Rufo and Jonathan “Lomez” Keeperman believe those institutions may be coming to an end as a result.
But it’s not necessarily not a bad thing.
“That 10-year period … the BLM era, let’s call it. Did any of these institutions get better? … Did the journalism at the Times and the Post and the Atlantic improve? Were there sparkling, important, seismic essays that emerged in this 10-year period? … Did Hollywood produce better movies?” Rufo asks.
“The answer is absolutely not,” Lomez answers. “This isn’t even debatable. It is self-evidently the case that everything has gotten worse that these institutions were responsible for producing, and you can measure this along any metric you want.”
“Those things are dying, dead, in decline. What is doing better?” Lomez asks. “Well, all the places that these white men fled to. Crypto, you know, the frontiers of AI and tech, where they could find places to still ply their talents.”
“What happens to these institutions?” he asks. “I think we just let them — they sort of have to die.”
However, Lomez does believe there will be a “silver lining.”
“There has to be some reason this is happening and some way to make it better. And the answer I’ve come up with … these institutions actually needed to decline. They were already potentially in a sort of moment of secular decline anyway, and that this has freed a bunch of talent to go do other things,” he explains.
“I do believe these people and these impulses are going to find their way toward something productive,” he says. “And this is what’s going to arise out of this moment.”
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Glenn Beck exposes ‘THE BIGGEST LIE’ the youth are told at AmFest 2025
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck stunned the crowds at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025 when he took on the lies force-fed to younger generations — and why it’s more important than ever that they wake up and lead the country to a better place.
“I wanted … to warn you that today the times have changed and you are desperately needed,” Glenn began. “Desperately needed. But there’s something else that I think is more important that you need to hear. We must stop fighting with one another. It is important to stand for the truth, but people are not your enemies. Lies are your enemies.”
“You can’t stop darkness with more darkness. You can’t stop hate with more hate. You only dispel the darkness of lies with the light of truth,” he said. “A single candle will light up a room.”
That’s when Glenn turned his focus toward the youth — as the America they’ve come to know has been one full of turmoil and deception.
“If I were you, and I’m 25, I was 1 when the World Trade Center came down. I would have no memory of that,” he explained. “And I certainly wouldn’t have a memory of the United States before that.”
Post-9/11, the United States these children grew up in was a surveillance state that has been constantly “on the verge of global war” — complete with the 2008 financial crisis that bankrupted many of their parents.
“Nobody went to jail. And you and your family paid the price that none of them had to pay. Then 2008, 2009, the cell phone comes out, social media comes out. It’s supposed to connect us so we can talk to our friends, and it does just the opposite. It divides us; it changes us,” Glenn recalled.
“Then 2020 hits, COVID happens. … Once again, you saw the entire system turned upside down and the little guy get screwed,” he added.
Not only did the youth see what happened to their parents, but they were told that if they went into debt to go to college, they would see great returns. Instead, the debt has only continued to pile up, and they received an “education” in which instructors insisted on telling blatant lies, like “men can be women.”
“And there are no jobs for you,” Glenn said. “Everything. Everything. If I’m 25 years old, I would think absolutely everything is a lie.”
“The biggest lie that you were told is that you don’t matter. Here’s the thing. I want you to understand: A broken system does not erase human agency. It reveals who still has agency. Every single generation since the beginning of time has inherited a mess,” he continued.
“Only the great generations turn that mess into a mission,” he said. “And that’s your calling.”
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Riley Gaines: Why Americans are FINALLY pushing back on gender ideology
Women’s sports, children’s innocence, and biological reality are at the center of America’s cultural struggle — but Riley Gaines tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey at AmFest that the tide is finally turning.
However, it took some serious struggle on Gaines’ part before she began to see a change.
“It was really hard to read some of the things that are being said about you. I mean, bear in mind, I’m a 21-year-old college student who merely just wanted to compete fairly, right? Seems like the bare minimum,” Gaines recalls.
“For saying the things that I said, such as ‘there are two sexes’ and ‘you can’t change your sex’ and ‘each sex is deserving of equal opportunity of privacy and of safety’ — for saying that, you’re vilified,” she explains.
While at the time, Gaines was hurt by the negative response, which included being called names like “racist” and “misogynist,” it’s now “water off the duck’s back.”
“I put all of the confidence and the security that I have in the fact that I’m fighting for the hope and the promise of eternal life. And once you do that, it shifts your perspective to understand that nothing of this world matters,” Gaines says.
Because of the courage of women like Gaines, Stuckey feels that the “tide is turning in a really good way when it comes to female sports.”
“You’re really in the thick of it,” Stuckey says. “Like, you see the activist attacks. You’re seeing what’s really going on on college campuses. Do you feel like the tide is turning?”
“110%,” Gaines answers. “You compare now to even a year ago, it’s very different. I think we’re seeing more people with the willingness and the boldness to say that men can’t become women. Men can’t get pregnant. Women don’t need prostate exams. Tampons don’t belong in boys’ bathrooms.”
“Obviously, it sounds pretty cliche, but I do believe courage begets courage. And so when you have people like yourself, or you have President Trump in the Oval Office, that gives the people a lot of cover, right?” she continues.
“They see him doing it or you doing it, and they think, I can do that,” she adds.
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‘Demonic’ transgender Christmas song wants to make Jesus ‘trans-masculine’
The transgender community isn’t pleased with Christmas — mostly because it’s not all about they/them — which is why two of them created a transgender holiday song that has racked up thousands of likes on Instagram.
“I think we all agree that Christmas isn’t trans enough so this is our decree to fill it with transgender stuff,” the two sing in their song, titled “Make Christmas Trans Again.”
“What if Jesus was trans-masculine?” one asks, while the other chimes in, “What if Santa was Saint Nichola?”
“What if all we want for Christmas is HRT for all of us?” they sing together again, before belting out, “It’s going to be a transgender Christmas!”
The song goes on to advocate for setting “boundaries” with family, “yassifying” the Christmas tree, and “harvesting” a pair of “chesnuts” and “roasting them out back.”
“I don’t think you need to set boundaries with your family. I think your family’s fine if you just skip Christmas and don’t show up. I think your family’s probably okay with that,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments.
“You guys are awful people, and I feel like I need an exorcism from just watching that,” she adds.
“I’m looking forward to the transgendering Ramadan. … Or is it just Christians they want to attack?” BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden chimes in.
“I mean it was literally the third thing they said on that video was about Jesus. Like why? … It’s not about acceptance. It’s about poking us again,” he adds.
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Never trust the MSM: Vanity Fair Trump admin hit piece only confirms its malice
Vanity Fair’s bombshell profile of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other key figures within the Trump administration turned out to be a disingenuously framed hit piece.
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” Wiles wrote on X. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
“If I were President Trump, I would fire whoever let Vanity Fair do this because you could call this an unforced error,” BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler comments on “The Liz Wheeler Show,” pointing out that the photography used was also edited to be incredibly unflattering.
“Look at that picture of Susie Wiles. No one claims she’s a runway model. Like obviously she’s not 20 years old. No one cares about that. But that is obviously a photograph that is deliberately intended to make her look psycho,” Wheeler says.
Vanity Fair also included an extremely close-up photo of Marco Rubio, where according to Wheeler, they “make him look like he’s dying of the plague.”
“That was intentional. It wasn’t an accident. … They did this on purpose. It was malicious because they’re trying to undermine these people, especially the people who they think might have political careers after President Trump,” she explains.
But it wasn’t just Wiles and Rubio targeted by the magazine. They also included a close-up, heavily edited photo of Karoline Leavitt, who Wheeler says “obviously is a nice-looking person.”
“They are deliberately trying to make her look ugly … they’re trying to drive a wedge between President Trump and his staff,” she says.
“And I know the president is not naive. He’s not going to let that happen. And honestly, like I said, I know this is going viral on X, but really people should not be that upset about it,” Wheeler says, pointing out that the tactic is “tired.”
“Again, my bigger question is, ‘Who OK’d this interview?’ Like really? Are you an idiot? To give the mainstream media this opportunity to try to attack you, whoever approved it should be fired,” she adds.
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Glenn Beck: Brown University killer fits a chilling pattern of evil and self-destruction
On Dec. 13, Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente opened fire inside the Barus and Holley building at Brown University, where he killed students Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov and wounded nine others.
Valente then fled to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is believed to have shot and killed Nuno Loureiro, an MIT nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal. The suspect was finally found dead in New Hampshire after a manhunt that lasted for days.
While the motive is still being investigated, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck believes whatever it was, it may have had extremely sinister and demonic roots.
“Some students remember, they said he screamed out, ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Apparently now, people are saying, ‘I think he was barking,’” Glenn explains.
“If you’re barking, that might be a sign of, the guy was completely out of his mind,” he continues, pointing out that the shooter also killed himself after taking several lives.
“What’s interesting to me is how many of these people are — they go and do something, and then they kill themselves,” Glenn says, relating it to Steve Deace’s movie “Nefarious.”
“In ‘Nefarious,’ Satan has possessed this guy. And once in a while, Satan lets him come out, and the guy’s like, ‘Help me, help me, please help me’ … and then Satan takes control of him again. And what happens?” Glenn asks.
“He kills himself,” he answers.
“I think, unlike any time before in my lifetime, you can see this is evil. There is a force that seems to be sweeping the entire world. All of these people do these horrendous things, and then they shoot themselves. … It’s almost as if evil is playing with these people, getting them to do all of this horrible, horrible stuff,” he continues.
After they’re finished, “Boom. They kill themselves. Because they’re just a meat puppet of evil, and they’re of no use to evil.”
“They’ve done their job,” Glenn adds.
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VIRAL VIDEO: Sara Gonzales SLAMS Target shopper who films her own anti-Charlie Kirk meltdown
One California Target shopper has clearly been lacking in Christmas spirit this season — as the disgruntled woman pulled out her phone to record herself harassing an elderly Target worker over the shirt she was wearing.
The shopper, whom online sleuths discovered to be employed by Enloe Health, asked the worker why she was wearing a red shirt that read “Freedom” with Charlie Kirk’s name underneath. In the video that she recorded and posted on her TikTok herself, she accuses the woman of supporting a “racist.”
“Are you f**king stupid?” the customer asked, while the employee, acting nonchalant, calmly responded, “That’s your opinion, ma’am.”
“Imagine harassing this woman and posting it on your TikTok account like you’re the good guy in this situation. I mean, imagine that,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales reacts, shocked.
Gonzales dug up a little more dirt on the Target shopper, and what she found was disturbing.
The shopper, whose name is Michelea Ponce, is no stranger to political posts. In one Facebook post, she proudly shared her husband and daughter making fun of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“But there is good news out of this situation,” Gonzales explains.
The Target employee has been identified as “Jeanie” in a GiveSendGo crowdfund, which has surpassed its $200,000 goal.
“It’s like God works in mysterious ways because Cassandra McDonald, who was kind of on top of this fundraiser, she spoke with Jeanie and she said Monday, the day the fundraiser was launched for her, was the 12th anniversary of her husband’s death by suicide after a long battle with illness and oncoming dementia,” Gonzales explains.
“And she now works to raise awareness of suicide prevention options. And by the way, she said she might not even … use the money to go on vacation, because she loves everyone she works with. The Target is standing behind her,” she continues.
“She just sounds like just the sweetest lady who didn’t deserve that,” she adds.
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Viral theory claims ‘Home Alone’ is secretly a Christian film — and the symbolism is shocking
The film “Home Alone” has been a beloved Christmas movie for decades.
However, “Live Free” podcast host Josh Howerton recently went mega-viral for pointing out something that few people have noticed: “Home Alone” is also a Christian movie.
“And so I’m going to read this. He says, ‘Watch this scene very carefully where Kevin is drawn into the beauty and warmth of the church,’” Howerton begins in a TikTok clip.
“As he walks inside to ‘Oh Holy Night,’ he hears the words, ‘Fall on your knees, oh, hear the angel voices’ … a sanctuary candle passes across the foreground, indicating that Christ is present inside the church,” he continues.
“When you first meet Old Man Marley, in the movie, what’s he doing? He’s salting the earth. Now so check this out. So Old Man Marley, Christ figure, Kevin makes a confession to him, then shakes his hand, and we see a bandage on Marley’s hand … his hand is pierced all the way through like the nails driven through Christ’s hands on the cross,” Howerton explains.
“At the end of the movie, Kevin cannot save himself from the burglars, and so Marley appears again to rescue him,” he says, adding, “’Home Alone’ is a Christian movie.”
“I got goosebumps,” BlazeTV co-host Jeff Fisher says on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”
“That’s interesting,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray chimes in.
“I mean, that’s some subtle symbolism there,” he adds.
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Debate: Hip-hop culture’s grip on Deion and Shedeur Sanders
BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes that football stars like Deion Sanders and his son Shedeur are spreading the worst of black culture to not only NFL fans but players — but former NFL quarterback Shaun King doesn’t share his sentiment.
“If we’re being honest, the black rap hip-hop culture has permeated every part of America. I mean, go on TikTok. It’s white moms with young white daughters doing the dances. You know, I don’t even know if athletes are who this generation of young Americans idolize,” King argues.
“All they did was looked at what the algorithm says works, and we’re going to use this to build a post-Deion playing career brand, and it’s focused on that energy. But they didn’t create it. They just took what was working and said, ‘We’re gonna use it to bring some more money into the Sanders’ family,’” he continues.
“So that’s why I try not to target them. It’s like they’re the reason that Jaxson Dart is wearing diamond necklaces or that J.J. McCarthy is doing the dance as he runs. … It’s rap, hip-hop took over,” he says, adding, “They had like a 10-15 year stretch where they kind of raised a whole decade of Americans.”
“On that we agree,” Whitlock says.
“Hip-hop has had incredible influence over athletes and young people in general, and for black athletes, my argument is like, ‘Hey man, football, particularly at the quarterback position, but football in general, because of its military-like structure, it’s about submission,’” he explains.
“It’s about submitting to the head coach and the team as greater than yourself. And hip-hop is about individuality and being rebellious to authority,” he adds.
Whitlock also points out that point-wise, white quarterbacks are dominating black quarterbacks in the NFL — and he believes it has a lot to do with this culture.
“White guys are free to submit,” Whitlock explains. “Black guys have all this pressure to be rebellious, mimic hip-hop culture, and that’s why there’s a bit of a struggle, and that’s what I’m saying is going to be a part of Shedeur’s struggle.”
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