Well, that was a year, wasn’t it? While no one had a sitting president being booted off his party’s ticket while simultaneously witnessing the greatest political comeback since Grover Cleveland on their bingo card, we can all at least say 2024 didn’t have a dull moment…even when we wanted one.

As we look forward to 2025, let’s check out the background of the mirror one last time and rank the top 5 people who made 2024 a year that no one who lived through it will ever forget. 

Five: Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor was a virtual unknown all year, outside of the small (and dwindling) audience of MSNBC, where he would occasionally appear. Then he called Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, “weird.” In a liberal media environment desperate for anything close to Trump’s ability to give out nicknames, it went viral. The unknown younger-than-he-looks governor with an unvetted past vaulted to the top of the VP contender list for Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris based on that alone.