Move Over, Oscar! Meet the Jessie Awards' "Worst of the Worst"

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C.

Greetings, fellow political junkies! This is the first installment of a three-part series named the Jessie Awards.

This week, we give nine awards to the Trump administration’s WORST OF THE WORST. There are so many (un)worthy contenders that it has been quite the chore to choose between them. But here we go, celebrating the merely vomitose to the unimaginably toxic!

The Pit-Bull Award goes to Attorney General Pam Bondi

At a Senate oversight hearing on October 7, Pouty Pam was surly, smug, and disrespectful. As the New York Times put it it, her approach “was simple and brutal: Don’t answer, just attack.”

During the hearing, Calif. Senator Adam Schiff listed at least a dozen questions that Bondi had refused to answer. Instead, she attacked him personally, slinging multiple smears at him and each Democratic questioner.

Bondi’s performance was no surprise. Trump hired her during his first impeachment proceeding to be an attack dog. She did so then by making false allegations about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. She later supported Trump’s lies claiming voter fraud. So, her recent performance was par for the course.

You can put lipstick on a rabid pit bull, but it’s still the bitch from hell.

The Most Pathetic Toady Award goes to FBI Director Kash Patel

Kash Patel currently does the dirty work for Trump’s regime. In his testimony last month before the House Judiciary Committee on the Epstein files, Patel’s angry, bug-eyed performance made him come off like a cornered rat. Afterwards, New York Rep. Dan Goldman observed, “Patel did what he was hired to do: lied, deflected, and tried to cover for Donald Trump.”

But Patel was not born a toady. His family, of Ugandan-Indian background, faced ethnic persecution and were expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972.

Patel’s senior-year quote in high school came from Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel: "Racism is man's gravest threat—the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason."

Clearly, Patel understands the prejudice immigrants must bear, racism’s effects, and with whom he has jumped into political bed. That makes his toadying for Trump just damn sad.

The Nora Desmond “I’m ready for my close-up” Award goes to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

Dog killer Kristi Noem loves to play-act the tough-guy role. Good at shooting dogs barely out of puppyhood, she’s also great at posing for photo-ops wearing ICE gear and sporting an automatic weapon. Most recently, she posed beside a sniper’s post on the roof of Illinois’ Broadview ICE Facility, surrounded by armed agents and a camera crew. Conservative media personality Benny Johnson also posted a video of Noem accompanying ICE agents raiding a Walmart parking lot. Camera! Lights! Action! Can the director please yell “Cut!?”

The Blowhard Boo-Boo Award of the Decade goes to Secretary of War, er, Defense Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth is a walking security breach. Hegseth disclosed secret, classified war plans—attack plans for Yemen—to other government officials, using an unsecured Signal group chat.  And Trump crony Mike Waltz gaspably included editor-in-chief of Atlantic magazine Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat. Oops! Never mind. National security isn’t a Trump regime virtue. And never mind that Hegseth is a self-confessed former alcoholic, alleged sexual assaulter, and none too bright. Hegseth is a reputed Christian nationalist who will follow whatever orders Trump gives him. He’ll have no problem trampling over the Posse Comitatus Act to send the Army into Democratic states and cities.

The Marquis de Sade Award goes to White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller

In Trump’s first term, Stephen Miller was the architect of the family separation policy, putting immigrant children in cages. Currently, he’s the mastermind behind deportation quotas, expelling immigrants before hearings can be held, imprisoning Venezuelans and others in El Salvador. and conducting fatal air strikes on civilian Venezuelan boats. Miller, whose own Jewish relatives have denounced him, is a combination of Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Hoess in the making.

The Cockroaches Behind the Throne Award

This award must be shared by Director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought and Vice President JD Vance.

Russell Vought was one of the masterminds of the ultra-conservative Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap to reshape the United States as a dictatorship favoring right-wing interests.

In an August 2024 interview, Vought stated that his Center for Renewing America group, associated with Project 2025, had drafted over 350 executive orders, regulations, and memos for the second Trump administration. He acknowledged he was creating "shadow" agencies. He also maintained that a president could use federal troops against civilians.

JD Vance is Project 2025’s man in the White House. He also has deep ties to the Heritage Foundation, and its president, Kevin Roberts. In Vance’s foreword to Roberts’ book, Dawn’s Early Light, Vance calls for followers to “circle the wagons and load the muskets.”

And to the Commandant-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump:

Though President Trump was deprived of the Nobel Peace Prize last week, perhaps he can take comfort in receiving three Jessie Awards. Though we doubt it.

The “Off with Their Heads” Award goes to His Majesty Donald the First and Hopefully the Last

In the last few weeks, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have both been indicted on trumped-up charges (for perjury and mortgage fraud, respectively) brought at the behest of the president.

Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi in September to prosecute Comey and James, pronouncing them “guilty as hell” beforehand while never even saying what they were guilty of.

Trump’s grudge against Comey is for not backing him in the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. That’s a bit ungrateful. After all, Comey got Trump elected that year by inappropriately reopening of an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails only 11 days before the election.

Letitia James had the temerity to win a civil suit in 2024 requiring Trump to pay more than $450 million he had fraudulently obtained. He also was banned from serving as an officer or director of any New York State company for three years.

There is no need to prove either case, since King Donald has all but decreed that there is no need for evidence of crime. Trump’s command is law now, and God help anyone who crosses him or gets between him and his money.

In Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts ordered, “Off with his head!” When it was pointed out that there hadn’t yet been a guilty verdict, she demanded: “Sentence first, verdict after..” Sound familiar?

The Caligula Award also goes to Donald J. Trump

The Roman emperor Caligula was mad, sadistically perverted, capricious, and contemptuous of the Roman Senate. Enough said.

Finally, the Pinocchio Award also goes to Donald J. Trump

Trump doesn’t receive this award only because of his nonstop lies. Rather, it’s because, although Trump thinks he’s the puppet master, he actually is the puppet. His strings are expertly pulled by Jessie Award winners Vought, Vance and Miller, who make Trump think their ideas are his own.

In the next issue, Jessie Awards will go to The Best Defenders of Democracy.

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Jessie Seigel’s journalistic career began with the political Washington Whispers column, written for The Insider. Since The Insider ended its run in 2023, Seigel has continued the column as My Washington Whispers,

www.mywashingtonwhispers.com. In addition, Seigel has had a long career as a government attorney, has received two Artist’s Fellowships from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, has been a finalist for several literary awards, and has had two professional staged readings of her play Tinker's Damn, with another play, The Three Jessies. More on Seigel can be found at https://www.jessieseigel.com.