One of the tightest Attention-Whore Index finishes ever. Continuing to do what he does best—denigrating a nation he professes to love, insulting its citizens (especially, sadly, the too credulous ones) by feeding them lie upon lie—Donald Trump won with 24.8 percent of your vote. It was his fifth straight A.W.I. victory. His spouse, Melania Trump, with only some P.R. for her memoir to offer up, was nevertheless a close second with 22.7 percent. Quite a talented household.
Third place went to the slick, children’s-car-seat-averse, fact-checking-phobic J. D. Vance (18.1 percent), fourth to newly peripatetic Prince Harry (12.2 percent). And a hearty welcome back to the fold for onetime A.W.I. stars Russell Brand and Boris Johnson!
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
JESSE WATTERS
“To be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish—that person has mommy issues—or they are just trying to be accepted by other women,” said the Fox News commentator. “And I heard this scientist say the other day, when a man votes for a woman he actually transitions into a woman.” So far, “this scientist” remains unnamed, and examples of these remarkable “transitions” while casting ballots—voting booths are small—uncited.
2.
ELON MUSK
Joined Trump onstage at a rally in Pennsylvania and commenced leaping up and down in an alarming manner, his arms raised high. When Musk finally settled down to speak, he said, “President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America.” Sat for an interview—with Tucker Carlson, naturally—during which he talked again about hypothetical assassination attempts on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, concluding they would be “pointless.” Also announced that he would pay a $47 bonus to anyone who referred a registered swing-state voter to a petition requiring personal contact information. Given his goal of a million such voters, this could cost him … let’s see … $47 million. In other words, next to nothing.
3.
RON DESANTIS
It was reported that Florida’s ever petty, climate-change-denying governor refused to take calls from the president and vice president about preparing his state for Hurricane Milton because, according to one of his aides, they “seemed political.” But at a subsequent news conference DeSantis said that Biden had in fact called. As for Harris, “I didn’t know that she had called.” A few days later, he was more certain: “She has never called Florida. She has never offered any support.... She has no role in this process.” He’ll see to that!
4.
MIKE JOHNSON
The House Speaker, interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’s This Week, refused to disavow claims by Trump and his son Eric that Democrats were behind the attack on Trump’s ear. Moments later the oily Johnson wouldn’t even admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election: “You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future. We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020.” No, not unless you’re the Republican candidate and haven’t stopped talking about it for four years.
5.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Spotted with his wife, Cheryl Hines, for the first time since l’affaire Nuzzi broke, driving around Malibu. Hines “went without her wedding ring for the outing,” the New York Post reported. “Shortly after the relationship surfaced, at least three other women came forward claiming to have also had a romantic relationship with the famed womanizer within the last year—all of whom he met through his anti-vaccine group.” Now that’s commitment to a cause.
6.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE
“Yes they can control the weather,” the U.S. representative from Florida posted as Hurricane Milton bore down on her state. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Probably those evil Democrats again.
7.
DONALD TRUMP
Announced, with emoji-festooned fanfare, that JPMorgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon had endorsed him. (Dimon has not.) Lied repeatedly about the government’s response to Hurricane Helene. Attempted to refute speculation about his worsening cognitive issues by rambling for two hours at a Wisconsin rally (“Kamala … doesn’t do interviews. They said why she doesn’t do? Because she isn’t, she can’t answer the question. She can’t answer anything. And I don’t know, you know.” Etc. ) Finally, in case we’d forgotten what a patsy and a fool he is, there were those hard-to-get coronavirus-test machines Trump—then still president—secretly sent to Putin, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, and the many private conversations the autocrat-bromancers have apparently been having since, whispering sweet nothings over the phone. Trump has called Putin a “genius” but thinks less of Woodward (“a total sleazebag”).
8.
VLADIMIR PUTIN
The birthday boy turned 72, thanks in part to the beneficence of his pal Trump’s surreptitiously sending him Covid tests that should have gone to Americans. In St. Petersburg, “students and staff from an obscure college were seen pouring into Palace Square, posing for the camera with posters hailing achievements of Putin’s rule including one saying ‘The Crimean Bridge is the longest in Europe,’” The Times of London reported. This old-school approach was probably a good idea: Ukraine celebrated the Big Day with a deft cyber-attack that disrupted Russian state television and radio broadcasts. Nicely played, Kyiv. But the Crimean Bridge is still the longest in Europe.
9.
VITALY VANSHELBOIM
Well might you ask. Vanshelboim is a—was a, having been fired—United Nations official who received more than $3 million in gifts from a British businessman called David Kendrick, around the time he was directing more than $58 million of the organization’s money to Kendrick’s companies. (Some $3.3 million went to a charity run by his daughter, Daisy Kendrick, to produce a song about the ocean.) Last week an internal U.N. court ruled that Vanshelboim was guilty of fraud and misconduct for not having disclosed the gifts, which, according to The New York Times, included “interest-free loans, home repairs, a new Mercedes and a $1.2 million sponsorship for his teenage son, who was a tennis player.” (“I’m not even a good tennis player yet,” the surprised son wrote to his father.) Vanshelboim has been ordered to repay the U.N. the $58 million.
10.
KING CHARLES
Reports in the British press and in a new book reveal that, for the first time, the monarch has begun to eat lunch—half an avocado—and that one day in the royal kitchen, having never seen plastic wrap before, he “shrieked.” This is clearly a breaking story. —George Kalogerakis
George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at Spy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and a co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War
