For our last unhinged roundup of 2025, Trump treated us with some genuinely mad ramblings about giraffes and literally looting $1 billion from the government to line his own pockets. Here’s what you need to know
It’s been quite a year in Trumpland. All the worst things people feared might happen in a second Trump presidency have come to pass – and even a few things nobody dared imagine. He’s pardoned people who beat up cops to try and steal an election, literally lined his own pockets with billions in crypto dollars while in office, demolished a third of the White House, renamed a presidential memorial after himself, lied constantly, launched lethal strikes which are almost certainly illegal, put the global economy on the brink of collapse and made Pete Hegseth Defence Secretary.
We’ll be doing a proper look back at this year of Trump over the Christmas season, so stay tuned for that.
But for now, here’s the last unhinged roundup of 2025. Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for keeping up. Everything is going to be alright in the end.
Here’s what you need to know
1. Trump demanded a really big trophy for his made up peace prize
Let’s start with this absolute cracker of a story from the Times. White House aides, it is claimed, demanded the “FIFA Peace Prize” trophy be at least as big as the World Cup Trophy.
The trophy, you’ll recall, looked a bit like the World Cup, but with more fingers.
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump will never, ever win, only gets a medal. Pfft.
2. Trump DoJ breaks the law on Epstein Files
Epstein victims have been voicing their fury at the Trump Justice Department releasing just a fraction fo the files they were legally required to publish by midnight last night.
The DoJ blame the lengths to which they are going to redact the files to protect the victims.
But it is quite some coincidence that loads of photos of Bill Clinton with Epstein made it through the redaction process, while his friend of 15 years Donald Trump only appears in one – and even there he’s only seen in a tiny photo stuffed in a drawer.
READ MORE: Epstein victims’ fury as Trump team releases tiny fraction of files – ‘What are they hiding?’
3. Oh yeah, and the DoJ quietly deleted that one after people noticed it
The solitary photo of Trump in the disclosure was quietly deleted at some point on Saturday.
The photo is of a sideboard covered with framed photos in Epstein’s New York lair – with the drawer open to reveal even more photos.
Two of the photos in the drawer appear to show Trump. One – of the President, his wife Melania and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s fixer and sometime girlfriend who is in prison for sex trafficking – has been widely circulated.
The other small photo has not – and appears to show a younger Donald Trump partying with four glamorous women, two of whom are dressed in bikinis.
Earlier this month a separate previously unseen image of Trump partying with young women was released in a cache of documents handed to the House Judiciary Committee by the Epstein estate.
The photo was included in the disclosure which went live on Friday evening, but had been removed from both the website links and downloadable zip file.
Nothing to see here!
READ MORE: Donald Trump’s Justice Department quietly deletes only photo of him from Epstein files dump
4. Trump boasts about successfully identifying a giraffe
Trump gave a lengthy, rambling and low energy speech to a smallish crowd in North Carolina last night.
It was theoretically part of his “affordability tour”,a bid to convince the American people he isn’t massively out of touch with their fears about the cost of living.
Of course, he spent barely any time talking about that, and weaved through a string of unintelligible guff, racist rants and boasts about how great he is.
Among his proudest achievements, it seems, was his ability to recognise simple pictures of distinctive jungle animals.
“I took cognitive tests,” he said, referring to a test used by medical professionals to check for dementia. “By the way, not easy. The first question is like what is this and they show a lion, giraffe, fish and a hippopotamus. And they say which is the giraffe.”
Problem is, the particular cognitive test he’s talking about doesn’t have a giraffe on it. It asks the patient to identify a lion, a rhinoceros and a camel, or a snake, an elephant and a crocodile, or a horse, a tiger and a duck.
There is, as far as we’ve been able to ascertain, no commonly used version of the test that involves a giraffe.
5. Trump drifted off into a barely intelligible rambling. I mean, more than usual
Trump went on to prove he definitely doesn’t have dementia by ranting that he didn’t do something during his first term, because of a thing that happened a year after he left office.
Discussing the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, he said: “I didn’t do it in my first term because I was the hunted, I had bigger problems. I had these animals trying to attack me at Mar A Lago. They went into my wife’s closet, You know I say this, number one, but it sounds a little strange. They looked at her drawers. [laughs] You have draw and then you have draw. They looked at both.”
They may well have done, but that can’t be the reason he didn’t rename the Gulf of Mexico during his first term, because the raid of Mar A Lago didn’t happen until August 2022, more than a year after he left office.
6. He claims he doesn’t mention looks any more
Trump claims he doesn’t mention people’s looks any more, ever since he entered politics.
“I don’t care what a woman looks like,” he said.
“I used to say beautiful, now I don’t care. The most beautiful woman can walk right across, and I don’t even look at her anymore. In politics…we don’t look.”
It’s one of the most egregious and easily disprovable lies he’s told in quite a while. For example, on November 25, he said of a New York Times reporter who wrote an unflattering piece about him: “She’s ugly inside and out.”
7. Trump floats the idea of ordering the government to give him $1 billion of taxpayer’s money
Trump mused last night about effectively looting the US government of a billion dollars while in office.
Trump has two open legal actions against the Department of Justice over manifestly nonsense claims – one over the investigation into his links with Russia (which found that he did, indeed, have links with Russia), and the other against the FBI for violating his privacy by raiding his Mar A Lago resort looking for classified documents he shouldn’t have had (which they found).
He’s after up to $230 million from both lawsuits. Weird thing is though, he’s in charge of the Justice department now, and could theoretically order them to settle the suit and pay him whatever he wants. It would be one of the most corrupt acts ever taken by a president of any country in history, but they’d totally do it.
“We have all the evidence,” Trump told the crowd. “And we have to do something about it. We have to do something about it. It’s illegal and disgusting.”
He doesn’t have the evidence, it was not illegal, and it was entirely justified.
“You know, I brought a lawsuit, and I’m winning the lawsuit,” he continued. He is not winning the lawsuit.
“There’s only one problem. I’m the one who has to settle it. In other words, I am suing, and I’m the one that’s supposed to settle it.”
There are many problems, and he is not the one who has to settle it.
He went on to spell out the entirely corrupt action he his considering: “Donald Trump sues the United States of America. Donald Trump becomes president. And now Donald Trump has to settle the suit. I hereby give myself $1 billion.”
After briefly floating the idea of giving the money to charity – which would still be looting and incredibly corrupt – he said: “Actually, maybe I shouldn’t give it to charity. Maybe I should keep the money. No? A lot of people say do it. I don’t wanna do it.”