Scandal Is Just Noise Now

How 2025 taught us that in Trump's Washington, political endurance beats accountability...

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

If there’s one thing 2025 has made clear, it’s that in today’s Washington, scandal is just noise. The people who survive it are the ones who learned from President Trump that endurance—not accountability—is the real strategy. Ride out the shame long enough and it eventually fades.

This year alone, a series of old allegations resurfaced around some of the president’s allies. There was reporting about border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepting a $50,000 Cava bag stuffed with cash in exchange for government contracts, only to have it brushed aside by FBI Director Kash Patel, who has reportedly been using FBI Boeing aircraft like a personal jet to visit his country singer girlfriend.

Then there are the lingering and newly revived scandals involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who seems largely immune, perhaps because he presents as a Ken-doll version of a war secretary, untouched by consequences.

On this episode of The Tara Palmeri Show, I break down the top five scandals of 2025 with veteran Capitol Hill reporter JulieGrace Brufke, who knows scandal more intimately than most after Republican Congressman Mark Green’s wife publicly accused him of having an affair with her—via a text chain sent to her Bible study group.

“Nothing like being slut-shamed for an affair you’re not having,” Brufke said on the show.

And here’s the kicker: Green had saved Brufke’s name under his girlfriend’s phone number.

Brufke has seen firsthand how the shrapnel of scandal in Washington doesn’t just hit the powerful—it slices through anyone unlucky enough to stand too close.

What do you think were the biggest scandals of the year?