2025 Martini Awards Part 1: Most Overrated, Underrated, Honest Political Figures
3 Martini Lunch
Radio America
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this first installment, Jim and Greg offer their individual selections for Most Overrated Political Figure, Most Underrated Political Figure, and Most Honest Political Figure.
In the overrated department, Jim picks a guy who managed to lose two elections this year while acting like he was entitled to the office the entire time. Greg picks a likely 2028 presidential candidate whose record is one of repeated, abysmal failure.
When it comes to underrated political figures, Jim and Greg agree on a Trump cabinet member who avoids the spotlight but consistently delivers strong results. Greg also offers an honorable mention to a figure who played a key role in the GOP’s victory in the government shutdown fight, even if there’s still significant room for improvement in other parts of the job.
For Most Honest Political Figure, Jim highlights a Democratic lawmaker who openly criticized his party’s incoherent stance during the shutdown and beyond. Greg points to a House member willing to publicly condemn electoral shenanigans committed by a fellow Democrat.
Don't miss tomorrow's special edition, when Jim and Greg list the political figures they were sorry to see pass away in 2025. They'll also name their rising stars over the past year and those who seem to be fading into political oblivion.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the three martini lunch. |
| 0:04.9 | Grab a stole next to Greg Carumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. |
| 0:10.6 | Three martini's coming up. |
| 0:12.9 | Very glad you're with us for this special edition of the Three Martini Lunch. |
| 0:17.2 | This is round one of our special year-end awards. And many years ago, we basically stole this |
| 0:24.3 | concept from the McLaughlin Group. They gathered in tuxedos in their kind of half-circle there and |
| 0:29.7 | went through all sorts of bests and worst and most and leased and biggest and smallest and all this stuff. |
| 0:35.3 | And so we have enhanced it. |
| 0:38.3 | We've modified it a little bit over the years, but for the next several episodes and |
| 0:41.6 | really all the way through New Year's and even January 2nd, you're going to be going |
| 0:46.4 | through a lot of these categories with us. |
| 0:48.0 | Today we're going to be talking about most overrated, underrated, and honest political |
| 0:51.5 | figures. |
| 0:52.2 | We'll also be talking about rising stars and who's fading into |
| 0:55.3 | oblivion, best and worst political theater, biggest lie, talk about the media. And eventually we'll get |
| 1:01.3 | to person of the year, turn code of the year, and eventually predictions on January 2nd. So, |
| 1:07.3 | Jim, I'm excited about this. It's been a chaotic and crazy year, and there's no shortage of nominees for most of these categories. |
| 1:14.1 | Just a bumper crop kind of year. And, you know, I'll let listeners in. Yeah, the negative categories are more fun. But also, there's a lot more competition. There's a lot more bad people, a lot more ridiculous things to decry. |
| 1:28.4 | And if you're wondering about the selection process, Pricewaterhouse has nothing to do with it. |
| 1:32.9 | It's entirely. |
| 1:35.3 | Yes, exactly. |
| 1:36.4 | And you should know that Jim and I do not know what each other have selected for these different categories. |
... |
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