2025 will be all about Trump. So was 2024 – according to what you read most. | Opinion
In case you missed it, 2024 was a pretty big year full of equally gargantuan events. And our columnists were there every step of the way.
In case you missed it, 2024 was a pretty big year full of equally massive events. Remember the Olympics and whatever this was? Yeah, that happened this year.
April's solar eclipse captivated millions across the country. Beyoncé reclaimed country music. Taylor Swift dropped a new album and concluded her epic Eras Tour, and her boyfriend's team won the Super Bowl. Again. (Not necessarily in that order.) President-elect Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in his hush money trial in New York. Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States and devastated Asheville, North Carolina. Wars in Gaza and Ukraine raged on, seemingly with no end in sight, while many of the nation's college campuses were overrun with pro-Palestinian encampments.
Oh, and there was that presidential election and everything that came with it, including Republicans' decisive win of all three branches of government, two assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump, and one incumbent president stepping aside mid-campaign.
Our Paste BN columnists and contributors were there every step of the way, bringing you analysis and plenty of opinions about the year's top stories – and even its most forgotten ones. But there were 10 columns that rose above the rest, thanks to you.
Read on for Paste BN Opinion's Top 10 Most Read Columns of 2024. (We're sensing a theme here, let us know if you spot it.)
2024 election developments, Fauci's congressional hearing and Trump being Trump rounded out our Top 10
10. COVID guidelines caused millions to suffer. Now Fauci admits 'there was no science behind it.'
"In his testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee (in June), Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to President Donald Trump, said the 6-foot social distancing rule, which the CDC originally recommended, had not been backed by a clinical trial. This is despite constant claims that COVID-19 protocols were based on science," columnist Nicole Russell wrote then.
"These disclosures are damning and maddening for all of us who had structured our lives around these rules for years. As a result, millions of people suffered needlessly."
9. Trump paid me to find voter fraud. Then he lied after I found 2020 election wasn't stolen.
"In November 2020, former President Donald Trump asserted that voter fraud had altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The day after the election, his campaign hired an expert in voter data to attempt to prove Trump’s allegations and put him back in the White House.
"I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign," wrote Ken Block, owner of Simpatico Software Systems and author of "Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections."
8. Want to know how weird Donald Trump is? Just read this transcript.
"If the CEO of a major corporation was recorded saying all that, the company’s board would have him removed immediately and committed for his own safety," wrote columnist Rex Huppke.
7. Will Trump chicken out of the presidential debate? Probably. He's a Grade-A coward.
Turns out even columnist Rex Huppke couldn't predict what would happen as a result of the presidential debate in June. But he came pretty close to what happened during:
"The third possibility is Trump shows up and goes through the whole debate, acting like the oafish boor he is, hollering when his mic is off, making up fact-free nonsense about 'rigged elections' and a 'Biden crime wave' and whatever else passes through his spider-filled brain.
"Then, afterward, he rails against the moderators, makes up more lies about Biden being on drugs, claims complete and total victory, says that 'many are calling it the greatest debate performance they’ve ever seen,' and then puts out a slew of transparently scam-like fundraising emails trumpeting how the media and the deep state are trying to destroy him."
6. Republicans, pay attention to who Harris picks for VP. One of them should scare us.
"The Democratic Party really only has three choices, and each would pose his own unique challenges for Donald Trump," wrote columnist Dace Potas.
5. Trump wins 2024 election. America needs to admit it's not 'better than this.'
Following former President Donald Trump's decisive win in the early hours after Election Day, Rex Huppke's column became our fifth most-read piece:
"We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.
"We just elected a convicted felon who has normalized bullying, spread hate like an industrial sprinkler and shown us over and over and over again he sees laws as irrelevant and self-enrichment as sacrosanct. Faced with a billowing ocean of red flags – from indictments for trying to overturn the 2020 election to the coddling of dictators who rule enemy nations – a majority of Americans cast their vote for the man who is a totem of the worst in all of us."
4. My 8-year-old daughter got her first sleepover invite. There's no way she's going.
"Inevitably, what you decide to do with sleepovers, like so many parenting decisions, is deeply personal. One thing I have learned as a mother is that we are all trying to do our best, even if other people don't think our best is 'the best.' We base our decisions off of our life experiences, our values, our education – and we try to make the 'right' choice," wrote Carli Pierson, a former Paste BN editor.
"With sleepovers it's true, you can't control what happens in someone else's house and that is a risk. It's also true that you can't shield your children from all harm, forever and ever. But who am I to decide the 'right' answer in the great sleepover debate? I am just an imperfect mom trying to do my best."
3. The Florida judge who just gave Trump a pass in documents case will now be judged herself
"The judge overseeing Trump's federal case for allegedly taking and concealing classified documents after leaving office decided to rule counter to decades of established law and precedence to just toss the case out of court," columnist Chris Brennan wrote in July.
"But this would be a good time to press pause on our frustration because U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated in April 2020 by Trump for the Southern District of Florida, is likely to face some judgment about her judgment."
2. Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.
"For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid," wrote columnist Rex Huppke.
"Musk, with his social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance, made DeSantis look like a fool. And now he’s done the same to Trump."
1. I can't wait for all of the media coverage of Trump's confusing Tuesday night rally
Trump's rally in Florida on July 9 came just days before his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman killed one and injured seven others in an attempted assassination of the former president.
"Folks, I’m worried about Donald Trump and his mental decline, which was on vivid display at a rally Tuesday night on one of his Florida golf courses," wrote columnist Rex Huppke.
"During the event, the former president slurred words, claimed his son Don Jr. is married when he’s actually just engaged, and consistently described the world around him in a manner wholly inconsistent with reality.
"During one heartbreaking moment, Trump stopped talking for a full minute while the usual eerie music favored by an unhinged conspiracy group called QAnon played in the background. He sweatily moved his head back and forth and randomly pointed at people, appearing to not know exactly what he was doing."