The DEFINITIVE top 10 stories of 2024



As 2024 comes to a close, Steve Deace, Todd Erzen, and Aaron McIntire are doing some reflecting on all that’s occurred over the past 366 days of this wild and unprecedented leap year.

“What a strange trip it has been,” says Deace.

The team takes on the challenging task of narrowing down the craziest events and happenings of 2024 into the top 10 stories of the year.

10. Adventures in 'Scamdemia'

On January 2, 2024, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned after journalist Christopher Rufo exposed her as a plagiarist. His investigation revealed that Gay used a number of uncited sources in her doctoral thesis.

“That was the beginning of a year on college and university campuses that was marked with intimidation and, in some cases, violence against Jewish students from pro-Hamas orcs as Israel continued its war against Hamas,” says McIntire, noting that it was “always unclear what, if anything, the protesters were demanding.”

9. America still likes baby-killing, but …

While 2023 saw some “extremely disappointing developments … for the cause of life,” 2024 was “more of a mixed bag,” says McIntire.

“Florida's 'kill them all' amendment was defeated along with similar amendments in Nebraska and South Dakota,” but unfortunately, “pro-baby-killing amendments in places like Arizona, Montana, and Missouri all passed.”

On top of that, “the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine that physicians and medical associations lack the legal right to challenge the FDA’s approval of the abortifacient mifepristone” and “preserved access” to this drug, even in states where abortion is restricted.

8. Real America: Forgotten, abused, and gaslit

2024 was a year of lying and gaslighting. McIntire gives two prime examples of this.

One: Every time an economic report was released this year, it was “not exactly good but maybe passable with the correct spin,” he explains. However, in a month’s time, “the revised numbers [were] published, showing the economy was not nearly as rosy as previous numbers indicated.”

Two: When Hurricane Helene hit Florida and ravaged its way up the coast through six states, FEMA and other federal emergency organizations “were — and are — seemingly nowhere to be found,” especially in the deep-red area of Western North Carolina.

However, when speculation that the absence of aid was politically motivated ignited, we were told repeatedly that the notion was “hogwash,” says McIntire. That is, until a report from the Daily Wire revealed that a FEMA official ordered workers to skip houses with Trump signs. Then the truth became apparent.

This cycle of lying and gaslighting “was on wash, rinse, and repeat all year with various figures within the Biden administration,” he says.

7. Trans ain’t going away

Although Caitlin Clark “[set] new heights for female athletics and [became] an icon,” the realm of women’s sports was still tainted by the fact that several biological men posing as women were permitted to compete in women’s athletic leagues this year.

One of those individuals is San Jose State volleyball player Blaire Fleming, who “played all season for the Spartans, prompting several of their opponents to forfeit their matches in protest,” says McIntire.

He is one of several examples.

6. 'I’m putting together a team'

Unlike his Cabinet picks from 2016, which included “John Backstabbing Kelly” and “James Tranny-loving Mattis,” this time around, an older and wiser Trump has tapped a number of excellent people to fill his Cabinet. From Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel to Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., among others, Trump’s second term is bound to look different.

5. So long, Joe

A month after special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records concluded with no recommendation of criminal charges, as Biden was “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden dropped out of the presidential race following his disastrous debate against President-elect Donald Trump.

“Two days before that debate — June 25 — CNN runs a headline saying it's a right-wing conspiracy with fake videos that Biden's mentally unfit,” Deace recalls.

Then when Biden’s debate performance proved this “conspiracy” correct, then “the media that covered for him all the time suddenly does a pivot and now retcons themselves as the gatekeepers of democracy with great concern about the president's faculty.”

4. Illegal immigration and the murder of Laken Riley

“The most conservative estimates from our government's own data put the number of illegals who have come into this country during the Biden administration at over 7.2 million,” says McIntire. “The real number? Significantly higher, probably.”

Among those millions were many violent criminals, drug lords, and gang members — perhaps the most notable being Jose Ibarra, who murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. Riley then became a kind of face for the movement of people who support mass deportations.

3. Lawfare

In 2024, “Donald Trump faced an extensive array of unfair legal challenges,” says McIntire.

Those include the New York hush-money case, during which he was convicted on 34 felony accounts for falsifying business records; the classified documents case, during which he was indicted on 37 counts; the election interference case, during which he faced numerous federal charges for actions related to the 2020 election; and the Fulton County, Georgia, case, in which Trump and others were charged under the RICO Act for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the state's 2020 election results.

On top of that, “he faced a bevy of civil lawsuits, including a significant fraud case by New York Attorney General Letitia James, where he was fined a substantial amount,” adds McIntire.

Further, “there were various efforts to disqualify him from the ballot — like in Colorado, which removed him from the ballot before they were smacked down by the Supreme Court — and there were other sundry efforts to label him as an insurrectionist.”

“These cases collectively — all of them ranging in validity from specious to malicious — added up for a year of lawfare, but there's a reason why he's called Teflon Don, as many of those suits fell apart,” adds McIntire.

2. They tried to kill him

“In a shocking but not surprising turn of events, at a Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, an assassination attempt rocked the nation on July 13 of this year. Just minutes into his speech at the Butler Farm Show grounds, gunshots rang out, grazing Trump's ear and leading to immediate chaos,” McIntire recalls.

But “Trump in this iconic moment rose to his feet after being shot in the head and yelled to his supporters, ‘Fight, fight, fight!'" which resulted in one of the most iconic photographs of all time.

The attempt on Trump’s life, McIntire points out, was largely the result of the legacy media that perpetuated the narrative that Trump is Hilter.

1. Trump wins, again

Not only did he win the Electoral College, he also won the popular vote.

“That’s really all that needs to be said,” says McIntire.

To hear more on each event, as well as the crew's list of honorable mentions, watch the episode above.

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Meet Ainsley Erzen and Marshi Smith – two brave women fighting for biological reality and sanity in women’s sports



Ainsley Erzen is the daughter of Todd Erzen, one of Steve Deace’s cohosts on the “Steve Deace Show.”

And she’s one heck of an athlete. Ainsley competes in not one but two collegiate sports at the University of Arkansas — “one of the top women’s athletic programs in the country.”

Today, Ainsley and Marshi Smith, who’s a former national champion and a cofounder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, join the show to discuss their efforts to restore biological reality and sanity in sports and women’s spaces.

In 2005, Marshi took home the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke at the NCAA championships.

“That was one of the best days of my life,” she says.

Needless to say, when she watched trans swimmer Lia Thomas take home the trophy at the 2022 NCAA swim and dive championships, she was overcome with a “flood of devastation” for the women who were cheated out of a rightful title.

This is what led her to partner with other alumni swimmers to found the Independent Council on Women’s Sports.

“At ICONS, we have set off in the last two years to try and rectify and advocate for the vast majority of female athletes, like Ainsley, who recognize that female athletes deserve respect, fair treatment, and fair competition,” says Marshi.

According to her, the tides are turning. The organizations behind pushing men’s rights in women’s sports have been “meeting in the dark,” and what they’ve built is “a house of cards on shifting sand,” she says. “That house of cards is about to blow.”

And Ainsley is courageously taking part in the movement to restore integrity in women’s sports.

“Standing up is scary,” she says, but “doing nothing is far scarier.”

“I’m super fortunate to have people like Riley Gaines who are willing to speak up and lay the foundation for this issue and be trailblazers,” Ainsley tells Steve. “As she’s gained more and more courage, so have the rest of us. We’ve been seeing what she’s doing, and we want to help in any way we can.”


To hear what Ainsley is doing to fight for real women in the athletic world, watch the video below.


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In 'Faucian Bargain', Steve Deace and Todd Erzen ask questions of Fauci the media won't



The most influential figure in the United States of America during the coronavirus pandemic was and is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States.

Fauci was ubiquitous in the American news media throughout 2020 and continuing to today. Once described in the Washington Post as "a kind of public oracle" for the coronavirus pandemic, he has been the leading voice of the federal government's COVID-19 response, the top health expert cited by the White House and by journalists everywhere. He is a pop culture icon, a meme, a celebrity for celebrities, a sex symbol, a figure trusted and beloved by the American people.

And in their new book, "Faucian Bargain," BlazeTV host Steve Deace and contributor Todd Erzen make their case that Fauci is the "most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history."

Their argument, simply, is that Fauci is wrong at least as many times as he is right. But because of the weight of authority given to him by deference from policymakers (chiefly former President Donald Trump) and the endless promotion of his opinions as scientific law by a sensationalist news media, when Fauci is wrong, the consequences are dire.

In "Faucian Bargain," Deace and Erzen challenge the mainstream media narrative of the coronavirus pandemic. They do not argue that COVID-19 isn't a serious pandemic, nor do they dismiss the fact that nearly 550,000 Americans have lost their lives to this deadly disease.

They do, however, suggest with evidence that Fauci's proclamations on the dangers of the virus, on the effectiveness of wearing masks, and on the necessity for lockdowns have been inconsistent and wrong. They call attention to studies that dispute the so-called "scientific consensus" on the effectiveness of nationwide lockdown policies, what Deace and Erzen call "perhaps the dumbest management decision in American history." They cite medical experts from Yale, Stanford, Oxford, and other well-respected institutions of scientific research who have opinions that contradict Dr. Fauci's recommendations.

"Why aren't these counter-experts' opinions as valid?" the authors ask. "Why have we not seen these differing opinions vet each other? How come they're never asked about at White House press briefings with Fauci, who is obviously the biggest influence on American policy at the moment?"

Deace and Erzen fault former President Trump for giving Fauci a prominent national platform to exert his influence in the media, from which he openly contradicted the president's messaging numerous times. They write that Trump "handed over the reins of his presidency to Anthony Fauci indefinitely" when the White House extended "15 days to flatten the curve" to "30 days to slow the spread." They argue the federal government's recommendations during the pandemic, driven by Fauci, gave cover to the several states to enact their own lockdown policies, which had ruinous effects on the economy, mental health, the ability of people to seek treatment for other life-threatening diseases, and other unintended but devastating consequences.

"We, the authors of this book, believe the main reason Trump was not reelected is he never made the decision he should've made — firing Fauci — once it became clear Fauci was behind the curve he was allegedly trying to flatten," Deace and Erzen write.

In one fascinating chapter, sources from the Trump White House, who spoke to Deace and Erzen on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, shared a behind-the-scenes look from their perspective at some of the decision-making that went on in the early weeks of the pandemic. The sources claim that Fauci initially told President Trump and others that "COVID wasn't something that we should be concerned about" and that he would privately tell White House staff they didn't need to wear masks. But once the virus began to spread rapidly in several states, Fauci "changed his tune out of the blue" and began recommending mask-wearing and other policies he had previously argued against.

"He had no studies to point to, and started telling us we were gonna have to wear masks, when he previously pointed to studies that showed wearing masks could even make an outbreak worse because we're constantly touching and therefore tainting the mask or at least rendering it ineffective," the sources claim.

Other chapters of the book are dedicated to disputing the media narrative on Sweden and the global effectiveness of lockdowns, analyzing Gov. Andrew Cuomo's failures in New York, raising questions on the effectiveness of masks, and generally asking questions and raising points the mainstream media has declared verboten.

With over 200 footnotes, Deace and Erzen made sure to back up their claims against scrutiny. The authors invite their readers to go to the primary sources, review the evidence for themselves, and engage in a more meaningful and informed public debate on what happened in 2020 and where we go from here.

The authors want to start an argument. They ask for an open and honest debate of the facts. The American people should welcome one.

WATCH: Predictions for America under the Biden administration



Friday, BlazeTV's Steve Deace broadcast his show from Dallas along with his co-host Todd Erzen. Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere joined the program and offered predictions for what Americans can possibly expect under the Biden administration.

In this clip, Deace asked the guys how likely the Biden administration will be to use the full strength of the government against outspoken conservatives. Watch the clip to hear what the guys had to say.

Cant watch? Download the podcast here.


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Want more from Steve Deace?

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