If it felt like 2025 was just one big psyop orchestrated by the Democrat Party and its accomplice media stooges, that’s because in many ways, it was.
Learning nothing from the political and ratings beatings they took in 2024, the left and its corporate media allies doubled down on twisting the truth during the first year of Trump 2.0. Here are the top 25 lies of 2025:
1. The ‘Maryland Man’
Illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia has allegedly made a career out of smuggling fellow illegal aliens. Law enforcement officials in 2019 found him with “rolls of cash and drugs,” hanging out with members of the vicious MS-13 gang, as the Department of Homeland Security detailed. Abrego Garcia’s wife sought a protective order against him and said he physically abused her.
But when the Trump administration deported the criminal illegal immigrant, Abrego Garcia was transformed into a “Maryland man” by shameless liars like Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen. The Democrat, assisted by a shameless corporate media, painted a picture of a gentle migrant “wrongly” caught in the Department of Homeland Security’s cruel campaign to round up the “undocumented” and remove them from their adopted country. DHS rightly called out the twisted narrative for what it was — one of the biggest lies of ’25.
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not and will never be a Maryland Man—he is a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador and public safety threat,” a senior DHS official said in August. Democrats and liberal activist federal judges have chosen to stand by their phony “Maryland man” in defiance of the separation of powers and in the pursuit of paralyzing President Trump’s campaign promise to clean up the illegal immigration mess Democrats left him.
2. Lies About ICE
Liberals and their corporate media water-carriers have been caught in myriad lies about Immigration & Customs Enforcement operations. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported in tracking the lies Dems and the media are peddling to demonize ICE, CBS News did some serious spinning. The network news outlet reported a U.S. citizen was “forcibly removed from her car” and temporarily held in custody. CBS had to acknowledge that the woman was detained after she “refused to present her driver’s license and roll down her window when stopped.” And DHS clarified that she “was driving her illegal alien boyfriend’s car (who had been arrested prior)” and “refused to comply with law enforcement’s repeated lawful orders to identify herself.”
3. ‘Kidnapping People’
Sadly, law enforcement in sanctuary cities have gotten in on the ICE lies. As Boyd reported, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara urged residents to call 911 on “masked” people who “may be kidnapping people.” In other words, call the cops on ICE agents who are enforcing federal law.
“The community should know that if you see something like that that is legitimate, you don’t know if someone is law enforcement, you should call 911, and you should provide as much information as possible,” the chief said.
4. ‘Shipwrecked Sailors’
Democrats have had a hard time with meanings. And they sure have struggled of late understanding the difference between “shipwrecked sailors” and enemy combatants climbing back into their burning drug-running boat to fight for control of their poisonous cargo. The Dems scream, “War Crimes!” and call for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s head. But their latest political sortie against Trump and company can’t escape a bombardment of the truth. Just ask the Washington Post and its egregiously bad hit piece that collapsed under the weight of shoddy reporting.
5. Illegal Alien Superintendent
Sometimes liberals are the unwitting victims of lies. And often others get hurt by their woke preferences. Case in point, the liberal-led Des Moines Public School Board. Its members were duped by Ian Roberts, the Guyana-born illegal immigrant they hired to lead Iowa’s largest public school system. It turns out Roberts was a criminal illegal alien with gun and reckless driving convictions, along with drug-related charges, on his rap sheet, as ICE documented in October. The agency also revealed that Roberts, who had overstayed his legal right to be here, was carrying “a loaded handgun, hunting knife and $3,000 cash” in his car at the time of his arrest. The educrat was hired by urban school districts over and over again — Des Moines the latest, in spite of his lying about his qualifications. Why? Probably because Roberts fit their DEI priorities.
6. One Stupid Step for Womankind
Lasting less than 11 minutes, the much-heralded “all-female” space flight on Jeff Bezos’ super phallic-shaped Blue Origin rocket was perhaps the stupidest lie of the year. Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, and Oprah’s BFF, Gayle King, were the featured crew on this over-hyped, Space Mountain-esque ride. Perry dramatically kissed the ground upon touching down from the brief trip into “space,” and King compared the voyage to pioneer astronaut Alan Shepard’s historic trek.
7. Ukraine on the Verge of Victory
Arguably the most deadly lie of the year is that corrupt Ukraine can survive the brutal war with corrupt Russia long enough to achieve a better peace deal. That logic is the stuff of the military industrial complex, its congressional beneficiaries, and the delusional Ukraine flag-wavers. Iuliia Mendel, press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021, disabused the delusional sanguinity of that notion, asserting that things are only getting worse for her beloved country.
“My country is bleeding out,” Mendel wrote last month on X. “Many who reflexively oppose every peace proposal believe they are defending Ukraine. With all respect, that is the clearest proof they have no idea what is actually happening on the front lines and inside the country right now.”
8. Shutdown Meltdown
The longest and dumbest government shutdown in U.S. history was more kabuki theater from Democrats. They did what they always do in such standstills: They blamed Republicans. And, again, corporate media, helped nurture the lie. But the Democrats own this shutdown. They refused to pass a clean continuing resolution (the refuge of a modern Congress that refuses to do its job) offered by Republicans to keep the government open. Instead, the liberals held on to costly Covid-era Obamacare subsidies that should have gone away with the departure of the pandemic. They lost big and ended the year getting nothing from their month-plus temper tantrum.
9. The Autopen Presidency
The lies of the Biden era came into sharper focus this year. In many ways, we got more details on what we already knew: Joe Biden was a PINO, a President in Name Only. That became startlingly clear with revelations about the Biden administration’s, well, liberal use of the autopen. It was so bad that the House Oversight Committee’s report on the scandal deemed void “all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent.”
10. SAVE Lies
Nearly every House Democrat voted against a bill requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Dems insist there is no need for the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act because federal law already makes it a felony for a noncitizen to vote in federal elections. But that’s a flawed honor system, to say the least. Noncitizens are showing up on state voter rolls across the country. Dems made their usual specious claims that the SAVE Act would disenfranchise voters and be a hardship, in particular, for recently married women who have changed their names. Their disinformation campaign was readily assisted by the Pravda Press.
11. Epstein Deceit
When you think corporate media can’t sink any lower, the bottom falls out. The left’s desperate campaign to tie Trump to dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has imploded at every turn, even as the accomplice media look past the records showing the many Democrat connections. Earlier this month, several media outlets ran a black-and-white photo of a younger Trump posing with six young women. Democrats on the committee investigating the “Epstein files” distributed the photo with the faces of the women blacked out, “fueling speculation” from outlets like MS Now that he was surrounded by Epstein’s victims. Turns out the women were models for Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion, posing in a photo with a man one of the models described as “very gentlemanly” at an event at Trump’s home, according to The Telegraph. An unredacted version of the photo reveals the models to be “adult women,” the New York Post reported.
12. ‘Misleading Edit’
If the BBC can’t find the truth, it will invent it. The British government’s leftist propaganda broadcaster has come under fire for a “misleading edit,” as NPR described it, which debuted right before the 2024 election. The documentary Trump: A Second Chance? — commissioned by the BBC — “spliced” together separate parts of the president’s speech on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021 riots. The fabricated clip omitted the part of Trump’s speech in which he called for peaceful protest. BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized on behalf of the BBC, admitting that the clip gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.” Trump is suing the media giant for $10 billion, alleging defamation.
13. California Scheming
When Gov. Gavin Newsom talks about “free and fair elections,” he means whatever is most politically expedient for the Democrat Party — and him. California’s slimy chief executive likes to say his state’s mid-decade gerrymandering to secure more Democrat congressional seats is all about “democracy.” It’s not. It’s revenge for red-state Texas’ redrawing of its maps to benefit Republicans. But Newsom, undoubtedly filled with sugarplum visions of himself in the White House, is very comfortable with the lie that California Democrats are manipulating the state’s political maps to save democracy.
15. Fascistizing
Sticking with their favorite attack line from 2024, Democrats continued to compare Trump, members of his administration, and plenty of Republicans to “Nazis” and “fascists,” because they are doing what they were elected to do. It seems they have forgotten what real fascism looks like. It is interesting that the guy whom the left likes to villainize as a Nazi presided over a historic peace deal protecting millions of Jews, even as Democrats rally behind anti-semites calling for the destruction of Israel.
16. Weaponizing Lies
An overseas publication declared that “Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to ‘bully, prosecute, punish and silence’ his foes.” That’s the gist of the left’s lie throughout the first year of the 47th president’s second nonconsecutive term. The hypocrisy is stunning. The Biden administration spent four years using the Justice Department and blue state law enforcement allies to target and prosecute their political enemies — Trump at the top of that list. Lies are the trusted tools of the hypocrite.
17. Jimmy Kimmel as Victim
When late-night cockroach Jimmy Kimmel momentarily lost his troubled gig for his abhorrent and absurd rant about slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk, his TDS-suffering defenders claimed Jimmy was the victim of a speech suppression campaign. ABC parent company Disney yanked Kimmel from the airwaves after he crudely and falsely attempted to link Kirk’s assassin to “the MAGA gang.” Hundreds of lefty celebrities and activists signed an open letter peddled by the far-left American Civil Liberties Union. They called Disney’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.” It wasn’t. It was an employer disciplining an employee for saying something stupid that caused problems. Disney quickly capitulated and saved a late-night show watched by a declining number of poor souls.
18. Socialism Will Save Us
Ugandan-born communist Zohran Mamdani is soon to become New York City’s next mayor. Mamdani won the Big Apple’s top leadership post in large part on his promises that socialism would save the day. New Yorkers bought the lie. The purchase will prove very costly. As The Federalist previously reported, “Mamdani has reportedly voiced support for taxpayer subsidization of so-called ‘trans’ surgeries (including for minors) and health care for illegal aliens, government-owned grocery stores, ‘free’ bus fare and child care, hiking the corporate tax rate, and limiting the NYPD’s ‘duties relating to mental-health crisis intervention, homelessness outreach and traffic ticketing,’ according to the [New York] Post.” Mamdani preached affordability in a city long run by liberals whose policies made life tremendously expensive for its 8.5 million residents.
19. Iran Doesn’t Want Nuclear Weapons
The Islamic regime had long protested claims that it was developing nuclear weapons while it was in the process of developing nuclear weapons. Democrats believed the lies, ultimately carrying water for one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism. Trump didn’t share his political opponents’ optimism. In June, the president sent Iran a message — and bunker buster bombs crippling the regime’s nuclear capabilities. Democrats went ballistic. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the Armed Services Committee ranking member, said “Trump has now started a war with Iran.” But the war Democrats predicted never arrived, and Iran’s nuclear threat was substantially diminished.
20. NPR Is ‘Unbiased’
In March, National Public Radio CEO Katherine Maher told a congressional committee that NPR delivers “unbiased, nonpartisan, fact-based reporting to Americans.” That was a bald-faced lie. The leftist executive and her public broadcasting colleagues claimed federal funding made up a very small portion of revenue. The outlet still came hat in hand when Republicans threatened to cut $1.1 billion in funding to public broadcasting. After they did, NPR announced it was trimming its budget. The leftists controlling public broadcasting are learning what FAFO means.
21. The Fallacy of Mahmoud Khalil
The left has depicted the America-hating and Palestinian political organizer as a free speech casualty after the Trump administration ordered his deportation. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, has spent much of his collegiate time agitating on campus. He was a big player in the riotous and antisemitic “pro-Palestine” demonstrations that paralyzed Columbia. The Department of Homeland Security says Khalil led “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” As the New York Post reported, “Khalil and Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which has vowed to escalate its tactics ‘until the empire crumbles,’ were among those taking part in the campus takeover at the start of the school year.” Columbia United Apartheid Divest “sympathizes with terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah,” according to the outlet.
22. Spartacus’ Long, Meaningless Speech
When grandstanding Democrat Sen. Cory Booker gassed on for 25 hours on the Senate floor, The Conversation insisted that Booker’s record-breaking speech offered “a strategy for Trump opponents in a fragmented media landscape.” The publication believed that Spartacus’ political stunt disrupted “the constant public spotlight on Trump.” It didn’t. It was pointless and self-serving. It changed no one’s mind. It proved an excruciatingly long exercise in futility.
23. Texas Floods Truth Twister
After powerful floods swept through the Texas Hill Country, killing at least 135 people, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said he was “personally praying that Donald Trump finally understands this is not a game — it’s real life and there are serious consequences to playing politics with our security and emergency preparedness.” Democrats hoped to lay the blame on Trump for staffing shortages at the National Weather Service. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called out the “depraved lie,” noting that “NWS offices in the region, including centers in San Antonio and San Angelo, were fully staffed and issued ‘timely and precise warnings,’” as The Federalist reported.
24. No Kings
In October, corporate media gleefully reported 2,500 “No Kings” events in communities across the country would push back on Trump’s “assault on America’s democratic foundations.” But the resistance movement backed by some of the biggest liberal sugar daddies isn’t a defense of democracy but an effort to protect the leftist power players and the system they control. “As such, when progressives say they are ‘protecting democratic norms’ they are in reality protecting their dominance within the unelected government bureaucracy, the mainstream media ecosystem, academia, and other institutions that operate beyond the reach of American voters, all of which Trump is seeking to either reform or dismantle,” Adam Johnston wrote in The Federalist.
25. The Lie That Lives On
In 2013, Politifact declared President Barack Obama’s false claims about Obamacare the “lie of the year.” Who could forget Obama’s promise that, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it?” That 12-year-old lie continues to resonate today in the broken, government-driven health insurance program. We’re living with the disastrous law Democrats created, one about which then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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