The top 158 characters from The Trump Years, the world’s worst and most-watched organized crime show
It’s cliche at this point to compare The Trump Years to a poorly scripted network TV dramedy. In addition to enduring corruption, death, and pain, we Americans endured years of “the writers are really running out of ideas, am I right?” jokes.
But the resemblance to a television show is also uncanny as hell, and completely unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed, at least since those two forgettable seasons of Bill, Monica, and the Blue Dress.
The Trump Years has indeed jumped from one improbability after another. From the moment our protagonist, who we’ll call “DJT” here, descended his gilded escalator in front of dozens of paid actors, it all seemed like all a big stunt.
But this was a show with legs. First he knocked out Jeb Bush from the race, and then took down each remaining contender via a strategy of focused bullying. Then he won the nomination. He won the election, with help from his creditors in Russia. He actually took the job. He never divested his businesses. He never became “presidential.” He survived impeachment.
In spite of raging incompetence, nonstop contradictions, dozens of sexual assault allegations, nonstop insults to the things Americans hold dear, a confederacy of idiots defending him… he was still nearly elected President for Life in 2020. (And his coup attempt is failed, not for lack of trying.)
The five years since he declared he’d run for President has been five of America’s worst in modern history, a tragedy of disease and death, deportations, corruption, anti-democracy, self-dealing, kleptocracy, demolition of the institutions that actually worked, and undeniable cult behavior.
But if it all felt like a television show to you, one with profoundly real-world impacts, it’s because it kind of was. And the whole world hate-watched it. (Except for 40% of Americans, who watched an alternate version of the series with many factual scenes replaced with fictional ones.)
We’re likely to get a smaller spinoff series in 2021, both eagerly anticipated and profoundly dreaded by audiences around the world. But let’s quickly review these five awful but always morbidly compelling seasons of the world’s worst crime show.
Season 1: The Becoming. DJT teases, declares, lays waste to the Senators and Governors running against him, defeats Hillary, and assumes command of the United States and its most powerful apparatus, the Republican Party.
Season 2: The Creeping Drama. The firing of Michael Flynn starts a chain reaction of lies that becomes the Mueller Investigation. New characters appear, sparks fly, and the threat of nuclear war hangs over everything.
Season 3: The Turning Point. DJT’s gets his biggest win, a monster tax cut. But the seasons ends with a cliffhanger, as a Blue Wave washes over Congress.
Season 4: The Mueller Reveal. After sweeping up dozens of minor characters, a major new character and a turncoat protect the Big Guy from damage.
Season 5: The Final Season. Starting with impeachment and ending with a loss of the Electoral College and an incompetent but lethal coup attempt, this season had everything. And it’s setting up a revival.
So here we are. The top 158 characters in Trumpworld. I’ve broken them up into “gangs,” because that’s how you do a mob show.
The Family:
This was the team that accompanied DJT in the show’s first episode. Some met their fates earlier than others.
- DJT. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Every show needs an anti-hero, and DJT is one of the greatest anti-heroes in history, a character devoid of redeeming qualities, yet deeply appreciated by the most misguided audience members who skip all the scenes he’s not in.
2. Donald Trump Jr. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Hard to pick one, given his general inconsequence, but Junior was there the whole time, just apprentice-trolling for his old man, continuing not to win the love of a man who cannot. OK, let’s go with his coked-up snowmobile selfie-video where he name-checked “Q.”
3. Michael Cohen. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Probably the most consequential turncoat, Cohen was DJT’s muscle well into Season 2, with a filthy backstory that stretched back years. When his office was raided by the FBI, he flipped on his boss, very publicly, in front of Congress. Then he went to prison, thrown under the bus by the big guy.
4. Dr. Harold Bornstein. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The most bizarre medical evaluation ever written, obviously dictated by the patient, later admitted to have been dictated by the patient. It was sad to see him leave the show, and to quietly pass away right before the end of Trump’s term.
5. Jared Kushner. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The obvious joke is that this nepotism baby with a rich felon grifter real-estate dad got put in charge of the world’s hardest problems and didn’t do anything. But his greatest contribution was teetering on the edge of personal insolvency before securing a bailout gift from Qatar, while ostensibly in charge of Middle East policy.
6. Melania Trump. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Easily the least consequential First Lady in modern history, a contact leaked a tape of her admitting she didn’t give a flying fuck about any of her duties. Fortunately for her, the tape came out the day her husband came down with the Rona.
7. Ivanka Trump. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Probably this ASMR video she made. OK, probably this:
8. Eric Trump. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Lampooned as “the dumb one” because of his looks, he continued to run the Trump Org and was probably secretly the least dumb of the bunch, and yet also probably the most likely to go to prison for non-political crimes after the series ends.
9. Kimberly Guilfoyle. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Getting fired from Fox News for sexual harassment, and moving onto her next job as “special adviser” to DJT by banging his son. Her biggest scene came in the middle of Season 5, when she kicked off the strangest Republican National Convention in history with a cocaine fugue event on live television.
10. Omarosa Manigault-Newman. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Nobody was clear exactly what she was doing on the show, but she was a pure chaos agent in Season 2 before quickly flaming out and taking some scalps along the way.
11. Barron Trump. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Growing to seven feet tall. You hope for the best for this kid, but he seems doomed in his own way.
12. Tiffany Trump. Introduced: Season 1, but really Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: The black sheep of the Trump kids by virtue of being born to the second of three moms, we didn’t really see much of Tiff until late in the series, when DJT trotted out ALL the kids for the RNC, like a record producer trying to expose his whole stable of crap artists he’s exploiting.
13. Lara Trump. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Botox and Trump TV and more Botox, so much Botox.
The Accomplices
DJT’s loyal crew helped DJT win office, keep him there, and reap his grifty rewards. Not all of them made it to the final season.
14. Willam Barr. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT brought him in to kill the Mueller investigation, and that’s pretty much what he did. Really came around in Season 5 with a round of last-minute state-sponsored killing.
15. Rod Rosenstein. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: The greatest trick in the writer’s room was Rosenstein’s multiseason arc. He first appeared to the audience as a potential DJT nemesis. As late as season 3, MoveOn was ready to march on Washington to protect him from DJT. But in Season 4, he revealed was playing for DJT the entire time. Psych!
16. Mitch McConnell. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: By effectively shutting down the Senate in Season 1, he remade the entire federal judiciary in the remaining seasons. America is lucky DJT wasn’t nearly that cunning or effective.
17. Roger Stone. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: A holdover from a prior series from the 1970s, Stone committed all manner of crimes for DJT, lied about the crimes to the FBI, bragged about those crimes and lying to the FBI, got convicted of those crimes by a jury, and then got pardoned by the Crime Boss in Chief. He’s a real piece of shit, just like our Constitution that gives unfettered pardon power to the President.
18/19. John Kelly & Mark Meadows. Introduced: Seasons 2 & 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Deserving the world’s worst job, and hating it the whole time. Meadows also vacated a Congressional seat that was then filled by a Zoomer Nazi.
20. Kirstjen Nielsen. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Doing her best to exact harsh cruelty on refugees fleeing violence and starvation, until she got shitcanned.
21. Chris Christie. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Continually humiliated by DJT, but always coming back for more, Christie was arguably the most laughably pathetic character of the series.
22. Ron DeSantis. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: DeSantis won the Florida governor’s race based on a platform of “I love Trump and want to be just like Trump,” and that was good for just enough Floridians who didn’t have their votes suppressed. He lived up to his Trumpian promise as governor, firing public officials who reported accurate data about coronavirus.
23. Sam Nunberg. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: A day-long coke bender across every major news network
24. Carter Page. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Continually incriminating himself on live TV.
25. John McEntee. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: After his demons ruined his federal career, DJT brought him back to ruin others’ careers for “disloyalty.”
26. Ty Cobb. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Being named after a hated baseball player from 100 years ago, and somehow also looking like that kind of person. (He was DJT’s first defense lawyer during the Mueller investigation.)
27. Jill Stein. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Siphoning just enough votes from Hillary Clinton to provide for DJT’s winning margin, which was a sad ripoff of a plot from a prior series that ended in 2000. Unlike that show, Stein’s connections to Russia, including a famous dinner with Vladimir Putin and Mike Flynn, made her run ever more suspicious.
28. Corey Lewandowski. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: As DJT’s first consigliere, he lost his job for “touching the merchandise,” meaning violently grabbing a female Breitbart propagandist. Still hung around trolling for more seasons.
29. Sheldon Adelson. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: An ancient billionaire, throughout the series Adelson opened his checkbook every time DJT did anything for Adelson’s favorite country. (Not the USA.) Remember, the globalists are bad.
30. Susan Collins. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: A catchphrase comic relief character, Collins would show up to let everyone know she was concerned and troubled, repeating the phrase to herself as she shuffled past the blood on the stairs.
31. Lil Pump. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: A bizarre bit of stuntcasting near the end of Season 5, Lil Pump made a big appearance in the election eve episode, with the memorable quirk of being called “Lil Pimp” multiple times by DJT. In the words of Pump from the chorus of his only hit track: “My b**** love do cocaine/ I f*** a b****, I forgot her name, yeah/ I can’t buy no b**** no wedding ring.”
32. Larry Kudlow. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: One of many henchmen brought in from other television series, Kudlow mostly made himself known with his boardroom-level views on the struggles of America’s working class. And he seemed drunk a lot.
33. Mick Mulvaney. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: The writers spread him too thin, and the audience barely noticed when they bounced him in Season 4.
34. Ted Cruz. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT called his wife ugly, accused his dad of assassinating JFK, called him “Lyin’ Ted” for a year. Cruz stood up for himself by pledging total fealty, all the way up to trying overturn the 2020 election in the US Senate. Absolute scum.
35. Jason Miller. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Hoo boy. Probably at the start of Season 2 when Family Values Man had to resign during the 2017 transition because he knocked up a co-worker while his wife was pregnant with their second child, then tried to slip the baby-mama an abortion pill in her smoothie. He was welcomed back to the campaign in Season 5.
36. Marco Rubio. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: He made a joke about Trump’s stubby little hands, which goaded DJT into bragging about his dick size, literally, at a Presidential debate.
37. Jason Chaffetz. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Remember this weirdo? For a few episodes in Season 2, he was DJT’s most dishonest defender in Congress, as chair of the House Oversight Committee. And then, just four months into his term, he suddenly resigned without explanation. He started his job on Fox News the next day.
38. Greg Gianforte. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Gianforte brought Trump’s unprecedented attacks on the press to its logical confusion, choke-slamming a reporter on election eve. After serving his community service sentence, the voters of Montana punished him by electing him governor.
39. Ajit Pai. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Conducting transformational evil in full public view behind a goofy smile and one of the show’s strangest character signatures, a cartoonishly oversized branded coffee mug.
40. Josh Hawley. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Raising a fist to the Trump mob in the moments before they swarmed the Capitol building and tried to murder his colleagues.
41/42. Diamond & Silk. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: As their 15 minutes expired, their social media prominence eventually dropped off, or as they call it, “CENSORSHIP.”
43. Dr. Ben Carson. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Discrediting “brain surgery” as a shorthand phrase for “intellectually challenging task,” Dr. “Sleepy B” Carson’s mellow presence brought down the energy in every Congressional hearing, where it also became clear he knew nothing about his job. Also, those paintings.
44. Betsy DeVos. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: A posh heiress to a fundamentalist Christian business empire, and sister of evil mercenary Erik Prince, she became one of the audience’s most reviled yet banal villains.
45. Dan Bongino. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: A former Secret Service Agent, Bongino somehow spun that into becoming a major source of political misinformation for the depraved Facebook Groups crowd, and eventually the public ownership face of the ill-fated Parler.
46. Dr. Ronny Jackson. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT’s official replacement for Dr. Harold Bornstein, Dr. Jackson kept DJT’s drugs flowing while continuing to publish false health reports obviously dictated by his patient. When DJT tried to install him to run Veterans Affairs, even the Republican Senate pushed back.
47. Charlie Kirk. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Through his billionaire-funded TP-USA, he became social media’s #1 source of independent misinformation for the white youths.
48/49. Lev Parnas & Igor Fruman. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Leading Rudy Giuliani on a wild goose chase into Ukranian corruption politics to try to bury Joe Biden. It backfired, eventually leading to DJT’s impeachment, which to be honest could have happened for a thousand other crimes.
50. Paul Ryan. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: While not entirely comfortable with the tone of the show, Ryan still reaped the reward in the form of his dream tax cut. He didn’t seem too upset about the new wave of Republicans, even when he quit.
Beneficiaries
These are the vultures who showed up to feed on the corpse of American democracy. Yum yum.
51. Brett Kavanaugh. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Upon the suspicious retirement of Anthony Kennedy, Brett looked destined to easy confirmation, yet another right-wing Catholic white person log on the fire. Then a high school memory reappeared, leading to powerful white man tears, memories of drinking beer with the bros PJ, Tobin, and Squee, and fond recollections of sitting around the Christmas tree with dad to review their calendars from the past year.
52. Louis DeJoy. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Originally installed to destroy the US Postal Service to help his personal investments, he then tried to destroy it to ruin the 2020 election. He failed at the latter goal, but he did fuck things up pretty badly, and likely thousands of votes went uncounted (and Christmas cards delayed) due to his crimes against the public.
53. Matthew Whitaker. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: The DJT years were marred by countless garbage people in really important jobs, but Whitaker may be the worst. For a few weeks after Sessions resigned, the US Department of Justice was led by a patent scammer who literally believes in bigfoot and once marketed a time travel scam and a toilet seat for guys with big schlongs. Repeat: The top law enforcement official in the USA was a patent scammer who was trying to catch Bigfoot.
54. Dinesh D’Souza. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Did you know that Democrats used to be the racist party, and Abe Lincon was a Republican? The Democrats don’t want you to know that, but D’Souza did, and for his relentless propagandizing DJT awarded him a pardon for federal campaign finance crimes.
55. Steve Mnuchin. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: When this happened.
56. Scott Pruitt. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Screwing up his plan to let polluters poison the world by treating the EPA like his personal slush fund.
57. Tucker Carlson. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: This former bowtie conservative leaned all-in on white supremacy in 2016, and now has the number one TV show with white supremacists.
58. Wilbur Ross. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: A scammy fake billionaire who nobody wants to do business with. What could DJT have seen in him? This muttering corpse tried to ruin the US Census. Maybe he did.
59. Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: In Season 2, old racist Joe was convicted by a federal court of contempt charges for refusing to comply with court orders over a period of years. DJT immediately pardoned him for “being convicted of doing his job.”
60. Sam Clovis. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Possibly the most egregious DJT nomination, this former Trump campaign co-chair and right-wing radio show host was appointed to the top science post at the USDA. Clovis had zero science background. He wasn’t confirmed for the job, but he hung around USDA for a year until the Mueller investigation brought down all his chins.
61. Ryan Zinke. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Two years of ethical failures, way too many to list, including lobbyists paying for private flights. But the winner was probably the $139,000 to replace the doors on his office.
62. Neil Gorsuch. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Receiving Merrick Garland’s stolen seat on SCOTUS from Mitch McConnell’s liver-spotted hands.
63. Dr. Scott Atlas. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: This:
64. John Bolton. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Producing a vicious yet horribly tedious book in the final season, after barely a year as National Security Advisor. (Yes, I read it. Tried to.)
65. Chuck Woolery. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: After four years of fluffing DJT on social media, polishing his assault rifles, and expressing skepticism about COVID, in Season 5 he suddenly disappeared from the show after his son got COVID.
66. Amy Coney Barrett. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: In one of the most shocking twists of Season 5, ACB got a role for life in a confirmation process that was frankly quite rushed by the writers.
67. Eddie Gallagher. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: A murderous Marine, punished and banished by the Corps for his endangering of fellow troops and psychopathic violence. Gallagher captured DJT’s attention and a president pardon, because DJT likes a Man in Uniform Who Kills the Brown People.
68. Carl Higbie. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: In season 2, his plum job running comms for the Corporation for National and Community Service came to an abrupt end, not because of a career of advocating for ethnic internment, but because of brutally racist radio commentaries that you can read here if you really want to.
Fellow Travelers
These are the men and women who joined up for ideological reasons, seeing in DJT a perfect conduit for their evil goals.
69. Kristi Noem. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: By permitting DJT’s July 4th rally and the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, attendees and the people who contacted them over the ensuing months killed killed thousands of America. Noem was rewarded with a big role in the Republican National Convention episode. Freedom.
70. Richard Spencer. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: One of season 1’s most memorable characters, with a full and satisfying arc, Spencer rose to prominence as one of the most visible faces of the alt-right movement that supported DJT’s shocking rise, and ended with very public and high-impact sucker-punch, a scene that inspired subplots over the next seasons.
71. Peter Navarro. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT elevated him for his relentless China-bashing. His loyalty in joining mob kick-circles and always pleasing the Boss made him one of the rare henchmen to appear in all five seasons, and he got involved in the coronavirus denial arc, as well at the coup attempt arc for some reason.
72. Nigel Farage. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The UK’s proto-DJT, he kept appearing on American stages for some reason.
73. Q. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Although never revealed on screen, he convinced 17% of Americans that the world is secretly run by Satanic pedophile billionaires who traffic children through tunnels or maybe Wayfair furniture so they can rape them and harvest their adrenochrome, and only definitely-not-a-pedo (even though he used to talk publicly about how horny he was for teenagers) DJT can stop them.
74. Sebastian Gorka. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Five years of the phoniest faux masculinity. The Nazi collaborator pin. What is this guy’s authority as a security expert again?
75. Mike Pompeo. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Doing incalculable and irreversible damage to the State Department and US Foreign Service, which saw people taking the entry exam drop by more than 50% over the course of DJT’s term.
76. Bibi Netanyahu. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Continually oppressing Muslims while also under indictment for graft. What does DJT see in this guy?
77. Mike Lindell. Introduced: Season 2. Best known to daytime TV audiences as the “MyPillow Guy,” it was always hard to tell if Lindell actually believed that God chose DJT to restore Jesus to America, or if he was just running his own grift. Lindell’s storyline ends with a failed attempt to convince DJT to assume dictatorial powers in his last hours in office.
78. The MAGAs. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Sending bombs to Democrats. Breaking through police lines, chanting for the murders of the Vice President and members of Congress, smashing the Capitol building to pieces, trying to sell Nancy Pelosi’s laptop to Russia. Unbelievable.
Public Liars
These are the people who went on TV to lie on DJT’s behalf. Sometimes they were original lies. More often, they were lies designed to confirm the lies that DJT told or amplified.
79. Kayleigh McEnany. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Exactly the press secretary that DJT had always wanted, she combined Christian piety with a commitment to full, bald-faced dishonesty in full public view. Kayleigh never failed to bear false witness.
80. Sean Spicer. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Remember that literally the first thing DJT did as president was make his press secretary demand the press lie that his inauguration crowd was the largest in history, the sky is green, Donald Duck is real, and Die Hard is an Easter movie. Period.
81. Kelly Ann Conway. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Ad libbing the term “alternative facts” on live television, unwittingly revolutionizing the act of public lying.
82. Mike Pence. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: More so than any VP in memory, Pence’s primary job was to repeat and justify his boss’s lies with added gravity. And yet most people will best remember the fly. Or maybe refusing to end the American constitutional experiment forever.
83. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: Admitting under oath that, yes, she lied all the time in her press briefings.
84. Michael Caputo. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Getting caught transforming DJT’s public health authority into a source of disinformation, so more people could catch coronavirus.
Russians
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans knew that Russians were the bad guys.
85/86. These guys. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: Welcoming their Russian overlords if it could mean that at least old white guys could remain in charge a few more years.
87. Vladimir Putin. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Successfully tearing apart the US and the United Kingdom in just one year via targeted misinformation on social media. The crowning moment was standing next to his protege DJT and getting DJT to say he trusted Putin more than the US intelligence services.
88. Maria Butina. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Infiltrating right wing power centers by sleeping her way through the NRA leadership. Classic spy shit.
89. Sergey Kisliak. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: This former head of the Russian spy agency took a private meeting with DJT in the Oval Office just hours after DJT fired James Comey for investigating Russian spies in the Oval Office. Another W for Putin.
The Fallen
Every mob show features accomplices and allies going under the bus, ending either in prison or a gun-march into the pine barrens. These are some of the people around DJT who went down. Holy shit, there were a lot!
90. Rick Gates. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: He went to jail in Season 3 for lying to the FBI and generally covering up all his dirty work for Ukraine. He wrote a book where he admitted to everything and expressed regret, but nobody noticed.
91. Rob Porter. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: A supposed pious Mormon and former Chief of Staff to Utah paleo-senator Orrin Hatch, the Trump administration hired Porter to be Staff Secretary in spite of him physically abusing both of his ex-wives, and John Kelly knowing the whole time.
92. Kris Kobach. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT introduced Kobach, a former Kansas Secretary of State, as his Voter Fraud Czar to find all the millions of illegals who voted for Hillary Clinton. Kobach accidentally showed his secret plans on camera on day one, and barely made it a few months before his Fraud Committee realized they’d never catch that wild goose.
93. Rex Tillerson. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT fired him via tweet after stories leaked that Rex called his boss a “fucking moron” behind his back.
94. Tom Price. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Turning Health and Human Services into his personal luxury travel agency. And yet it took months for the shoe to drop, signalling that graft is totally cool as long you keep it non-obvious.
95. Roy Moore. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: Running for Senate with a revolver pointed in the air, and then inspiring a hilarious number of Alabama Republicans to normalize pedophilia if it happened in the 1970s.
96. George Papadopoulos. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Drunkenly bragging to the Australian ambassador about all the meetings with Russians he was lying about, thus initiating the Mueller investigation.
97. Steve Bannon. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The architect of DJT’s victory, someone said “Bannon looks like a guy who vomits more than he showers.” His employment in the White House ended with Scaramucci publicly revealing his personal glory-seeking. We thought his storyline ended with his indictment for fraud, until DJT pardoned him in the series finale.
98. Jeff Sessions. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: After nervously perjuring himself in his Senate confirmation hearing, Sessions took nothing but abuse from his boss for failing to obstruct the Mueller Investigation. He was dumped by tweet minutes after the midterms, and then couldn’t even win the primary to get his old Senate seat back, losing to a dumb college football coach who couldn’t even name the three branches of government.
99. David Pecker. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Committing a major campaign finance felony by buying up negative stories about DJT’s affairs and actual crimes on his behalf.
100/101. Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislane Maxwell. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Epstein was assassinated in jail, a fate that was too good for him. When Maxwell got scooped up, DJT, the guy whose Department of Justice is prosecuting her, “wished her well.”
102. Michael Avenatti. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Leveraging Stormy Daniels to raise his own profile, then starting a PAC to support a possible run for president in 2020. His storyline ended with his felony conviction for trying to extort Nike for millions.
103. Paul Manafort. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: This guy who worked for Russian intelligence and who ran campaigns for other Putin surrogates in other countries signed up to be DJT’s campaign manager, for free! Nothing suspicious there. Eventually went to prison for tax fraud and witness tampering. And pardoned, of course.
The Victims
Not all innocent, these are the people who got shot on 5th Avenue (metaphorically).
104/105. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Getting publicly accused by DJT of murder… and cosmetic surgery.
106. Dr. Deborah Birx. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Squandering her professional credibility by not showing Dr. Fauci’s courage of independence.
107. E. Jean Carroll. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Becoming the most public and recognizable of the dozens of women to accuse DJT of sexual assault.
108. Megyn Kelly. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT’s first public victim of misogyny, Kelly was somehow undeserving of the attention, and wasted it terribly.
109. Michelle Wolf. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: The previously little-known comic made the most of a huge scene when she cracked some excellent jokes at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ expense. It generated a meltdown on the right, extending into a full episode about who the real snowflakes are.
110. Jeb Bush. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: DJT’s first victim of his “beat up the biggest guy in prison” technique. Please clap.
111. James Comey. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: After likely providing the final margin for DJT’s victory in Season 1 with a last-minute “whoops, we found Hillary’s emails and the FBI is investigating, whoops again, never mind,” DJT shitcanned his 6’8” ass via tweet and then went on NBC and admitted it was for the purposes of obstructing criminal investigations into himself. Comey won sympathy from nobody.
112. Jeff Flake. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: He used the power of his US Senate seat to stand up to Trump. Then he voted for everything Trump wanted him to, and then he quit. What a hero.
113. Andrew McCabe. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Getting fired by DJT on the eve of collecting his pension.
114. Peter Strozk. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Correctly and courageously flagging that the Republican nominee for president had been a Russian asset for years, and then being humiliated by said asset for sexy text messages he shared with a co-worker he was sleeping with.
115. Herman Cain. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Mostly forgotten from a memorable multi-episode arc on an earlier series, Cain made an unforgettable appearance in the middle of Season 5 by self-owning himself into the grave.
B-Plots
While none of these characters ever made their way into the main storyline, they provided memorable cameos and mini-stories that kept the audience engaged.
116. Anthony Scaramucci. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: The Mooch spectacularly flamed out in the funniest episode of Season 2, opening with some of the most slobbery oral gratification ever delivered in public, and closing with a hysterically disastrous career fuckup that somehow took Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer down with him.
117. Michael Wolff. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: A long-time editor with a dubious rep, Wolff produced the first memorable book of the administration, Fire & Fury, a nonfiction best-seller with a lot of the gaps filled in “creatively.” It still felt real enough, which was sufficient for the truthiness era.
118. Jim Acosta. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: I never heard of Jim Acosta before 2016, but he immediately became TV President’s least favorite reporter. Early in Season 2, when DJT stole and mutated the phrase “fake news” to mean “journalism I don’t like,” he first directed that phrase at Acosta and CNN.
119. Ken Bone. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Being named Ken Bone, asking an adorably naive question at a town hall-style presidential debate, and then being outed for perverted stuff on the internet.
120. Greta Thunberg. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: The extraordinary teenage activist from Sweden made for one of Season 4’s most memorable scenes, as she spoke at the United Nations the same day as climate-denier DJT, and then cursed him with a barrage of psychic daggers as he walked by. Unforgettable.
121. Mohammed Bin Salman. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: MBS was introduced to most Americans via a fawning propaganda magazine placed in American checkout lines by DJT buddy David Pecker. Trump’s commitment to an alliance with the House of Saud after learning they were Iran’s rival power in the region, led to DJT taking early sides with Sunni Islam over Shia Islam. (Not that he understood this.) The MBS plotline came to a crisis point in Season 3 when MBS had his spooks murder a Washington Post journalist and then hack him up into pieces. Never one to oppose state violence, especially against a journalist, DJT never really condemned MBS, and Saudi Arabia never paid a price. MBS ended up throwing his own goons under the bus (meaning he had them killed, too), and we haven’t seen as much of him since.
122. John McCain. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: McCain made arguably the best scene of the entire series in Season 3, when he arose from his deathbed to thwart DJT’s attempt to take away health insurance from 20 million Americans. DJT likes guys who aren’t captured.
123. Mark Zuckerberg. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Helping DJT get elected by managing the world’s most potent force for amplifying disinformation
124. Stormy Daniels. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Recollecting how she spanked DJT’s ass with his own magazine and then had sex with his Mario mushroom dick, all while Melania was recuperating from the birth of his son. Very presidential.
125. Kim Jung Un. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: His initial “fire and fury” appearance in Season 2 made for the most stressful, apocalyptic storyline of any season. Then he suckered DJT in a one-way romance. Embarrassing for our protagonist, and America really.
126/127. Oliver North & Wayne LaPierre. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: What seemed like an obvious marriage between two rich and powerful right-wing figures turned into a disaster that destroyed the NRA. Wayne tried to buy a mansion with member dues. Ollie tried to call out the board for improprieties. Russian spies got in. Investigation ongoing. Bankruptcy filed. Burn in hell, guys.
128. Jonathan Swan. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Probably the most consequential interview of the entire series, because Swan challenged DJT when he lied.
129. Kanye West. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: The Oval visit scene was key, but his greatest moment was his one rally for his own presidential run, in a bulletproof vest, complaining that Harriet Tubman was overrated.
130. Stella Immanuel. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: “Demon sperm.”
131. The McCloskeys. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: They got invited to the RNC for this. Then they got indicted.
The Resistance
After Season 1’s surprise finale (DJT taking office), the Resistance occasionally delivered some conflict that wasn’t entirely DJT self-sabotage. Some resistance was more effective than others.
132. Joe Biden. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Telling DJT to “shut up, man” during the disastrous first debate episode. But he was the guy who effectively ended the show, for now.
133. Kamala Harris. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Grilling Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing, which was enough to generate Presidential Debate fantasies for the next year.
134. Robert Mueller. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Generating the worst anti-climax in TV history, ending a highly prominent two-season-long arc with a report that said essentially, “We can’t charge him anyway, so there’s no crime. Now here’s a million pages about all the crimes he did.” When he finally spoke, the public realized why he was so quiet all that time.
135. Nancy Pelosi. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The clap.
136. Mike Bloomberg. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: A late entry into the Democratic nomination arc, Bloomberg spent a zillion dollars, only to be disassembled by Liz Warren on live television. His promises of funding the 2020 resistance turned out to be hot air, or maybe just wildly ineffective.
137. The Lincoln Project. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Developing the most effective communications of any anti-Trump force. Republicans are just better at this.
138/139/140/141. AOC & The Squad. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Probably Tlaib saying “Impeach the motherfucker,” which triggered Fox Nation into a frenzy. She should have been more precise and said “Impeach, convict, and remove the motherfucker.”
142. Alexander Vindeman, Fiona Taylor and Marie Yovanovitch. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: The baddest bad-asses of the Impeachment storyline sacrificed their storied careers for a righteous failed cause that couldn’t overcome the depth of Republican rot.
143. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: The baddest bad-ass of the Kavanaugh confirmation storyline courageously initiated a righteous failed cause that couldn’t overcome the depth of Republican rot.
144. Liz Warren. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Destroying Mike Bloomberg after he spent like a billion dollars to get onto the Democratic debate stage, brutally ending his presidential ambitions. (We’ll just try to forget about her DNA test fiasco.)
145. Pete Buttigieg. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: Somehow a way-too-young, gay, small town mayor made it to the final elite for the Presidential nomination through pure charm. Watch out for this dude in future series.
146. Mary Trump. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Writing a brutal, personal tell-all book about her shitty uncle Donald and his abusive, racist father Fred.
147. Anonymous (Miles Taylor). Introduced: Season 3. Most Memorable Contribution: Writing an op-ed and a book that became obsessions inside the Beltway, and really nowhere else.
148. Dr. Anthony Fauci. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Pretty much the only pure thing about 2020.
149. RBG. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Four years of documentaries, appreciations, and proof-of-life videos, only to succumb to her age in the final episodes of the series. (All respect to RBG, but maybe SCOTUS judges should retire while they feel secure about their successor, like Anthony Kennedy did.)
150. Bernie Sanders. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: His surprising rise in season 1 generated a rift in the Democratic party, but his impact in demonstrating the power and popularity of humane, activist government (labeled “democratic socialism”) ended up driving the Biden agenda.
151/152. Colin Kaepernick and the NBA. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: The NFL and NBA are different TV series that ended up bleeding into the Trump Show. In response to systematic and overt racism, Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem drove its own episode, that climaxed with Mike Pence attending a Colts game just so he could peformatively walk out. The NBA then fully embraced an anti-racist agenda, and what could be more antagonistic to DJT than that?
153. Khizr Khan. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: Offering to lend his pocket Constitution to DJT. DJT didn’t like that, and responded that he’s sacrificed a lot by, uh, building condos.
154. Andrew Yang. Introduced: Season 4. Most Memorable Contribution: While he wasn’t monumental to the central story, the people of Reddit really wanted to talk about him a lot. Late in Season 5, he kicked off a run for NYC Mayor that’s been an exercise in self-ownage.
155. John Lewis. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: One of truly deserving giants of American History, DJT attacked his lovely suburban Atlanta district as a crime-ridden slum. Hitting a civil rights legend with a baldly racist attack was pretty much classic DJT. When Lewis passed, DJT had multiple tantrums about all the attention he himself wasn’t getting.
156. Tom Steyer. Introduced: Season 2. Most Memorable Contribution: Trying to mimic DJT’s birther-to-nomination pathway by campaigning for impeachment right after inauguration. Dancing to a live “Back that Azz Up” right before the pandemic hit.
157. Bill DeBlasio. Introduced: Season 5. Most Memorable Contribution: Somehow turning a bite of a corndog at the Iowa State Fair into a pornographic film.
158. Mitt Romney. Introduced: Season 1. Most Memorable Contribution: After suffering humiliation in Season 1, Romney got a mini-redemption arc in Season 5 by being the only Republican in the Senate with the courage to acknowledge reality.
What’s next for these characters?
Right now, the US Senate is deciding if the Trump Years could be revived as soon as late 2023. Whether it is or not, many of these characters will have a lot more story.
