The 7 Thirstiest Members of Congress

Politico

21-04-2025

W
ashington is a thirsty town. It always has been: It's a city full of politicians, and no one has ever won an election by staying out of the spotlight.
But we at POLITICO Magazine think our lawmakers are getting thirstier — or at least more creative in how they go after the limelight. There are plenty of ways to get an audience in the age of TikTok, X with no guardrails, podcasts galore and Substack, and people are seizing the opportunity.
For the third year in a row, we pay tribute to those members of Congress who have once again proven that where there is a will, there is a way to go viral. Without further ado …
Ever since the 2024 election,
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has turned himself into the Senate's answer to Mr. Beast, game to appear anywhere and everywhere to feed the algorithms. He has done YouTube interviews with
political
personalities
, appeared on
influencers' podcasts
and
TikToks
and launched
his own Substack
, where he has opined on everything from the political
'realignment'
to the
'plight of men'
to the much-politicized one-hit wonder
'Rich Men North of Richmond.'
His main talking point? His argument that Trump is an authoritarian, and everyone should follow Murphy's lead in being furious about the current state of politics. His more between-the-lines point? That Democrats are in need of a leader who can channel appropriate levels of rage, and Murphy is, in his own estimation, just the man for the job ahead of 2028.
His social-media followings have skyrocketed recently — his personal and private Instagram accounts doubled their followings in just the first couple of months of 2025 — and that seems to be the point, or a big part of it, for Murphy. He bragged to the
New York Times
that his son was seeing his content on social media for the first time:
'I'm showing up on a 16-year-old's TikTok feed.'
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) represents
more than 31 million Texans, but he spends much of his time focused on his real audience: the fans of his podcast. Cruz releases episodes of his podcast, 'The Verdict,' three times a week and holds forth on every topic under the sun. With conservative commentator Ben Ferguson as a friendly interlocutor, it is the ideal venue for Cruz to share his thoughts on everything from Hollywood to Hamas without any pushback.
He promotes his episodes constantly on his X account — he fired off nonstop posts touting his recent interview with Elon Musk — far more than he promotes, say, legislation or policy proposals. For Cruz,
who once had designs on being the next Ronald Reagan
, it seems his focus is now on being the next Joe Rogan.
Members of Congress routinely
make inflammatory statements in congressional hearings to gain attention and cable news hits. But Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett has managed to become a perpetual content machine. Her profanity-laced tirades against Elon Musk provide plenty of fodder for both MSNBC and Fox News. In 2023, Crockett went viral when she
attacked Republicans' introduction of articles of impeachment
against President Joe Biden at one hearing, holding up photos from Trump's indictment of classified documents stored in his bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. 'These are our national secrets, looks like in the shitter to me!' she said.
Last May, she and Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
got into a colorful spat during a hearing
, during which Crockett suggested Taylor Greene had a 'bleach blond bad built butch body.' Not long after, Crockett filed a trademark on the phrase and used it to
start her own merchandise collection
, branding her dig as 'A Crockett Clapback.'
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) will
give a quote to network news, to a MAGA podcast, to a random journalist wandering the halls of Congress. He's not just voluble; he's colorful and folksy, which means that reporters are usually happy to use his takes. One late night, when then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) almost came to blows on the House floor during Kevin McCarthy's contentious speakership vote in 2023, Burchett observed, 'People shouldn't be drinking, especially when you're a redneck, on the House floor.'
Because the quirky conservative somehow always finds himself the swing vote when his party is just short of a majority, reporters regularly include his views in the major stories of the day. And when the news cycle is calmer, he's always willing to chat about UFOs and
has suggested
that aliens have underwater bases on our planet.
He won't show up for the opening
of an envelope like his
colleague from Minnesota
, but Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) still makes plenty of time to visit an endangered Washington habitat: the cocktail party. In fairness to Warner, it's easy to make it across the river from his home in Old Town to the embassy and gala circuit. Unlike his colleagues who have to fly to other parts of the country to meet with constituents, Warner's proximity keeps him in town, and attending Washington functions can mean representing the bounty of federal workers he represents in Northern Virginia. But it takes real thirst to keep showing up to the same parties and restaurants after three terms in the Senate. Despite his professed
online stylings
as a man with simple tastes, Warner isn't shy about keeping on his Senate suit into the evening and schmoozing over canapes. Hey, someone has to keep Cafe Milano in business.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been
thirsty for a generation. From his start in the Senate as a John McCain sidekick to his transformation into a Trump acolyte, the South Carolina senator has always found himself in demand on Sunday shows and Senate corridors; he's an easily available quote and he's always eager to thrust himself in the middle of any news story.
In the Trump years, Graham has used cable news both as a platform for self-promotion and as a means of communicating with the ever-mercurial president.
He recently raced over to the White House to go on Fox News
shortly after Trump's Oval Office blowup with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy; he used the appearance to both appeal to Trump's ego and urge Zelenskyy to cave and do whatever is necessary to appease Trump, despite Graham's longstanding backing of American support for Ukraine.
'I've never been more proud of President Trump for showing the American people and the world — you don't trifle with this man,' he said.
John McCain once said,
'The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and the other is to attend the funerals of Third World dictators.' Vice President JD Vance has added a third: Be a reply guy.
Since becoming second in line to the presidency — and president of the Senate, which is why he was allowed into this extremely competitive congressional awards roster — Vance has remained a relentlessly online poster in spite or perhaps because of his job. He gets into X squabbles
with pundits
, Democratic elected officials and
even a former member of the British Parliament
.
'You disgust me,'
he once wrote to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). Vance also sometimes just trolls.
'It's like they're trying to make us look cool,'
he posted in January, along with an image of a magazine cover showing young conservatives celebrating Trump's inauguration, which was headlined 'The Cruel Kids' Table.' More recently,
he posted a meme from 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'
to mock fellow Thirsties honoree Chris Murphy's comments in an interview with CNN. It's an innovative way to shape an otherwise largely undefined job.