Even the fiercest attention-mongers went virtually unnoticed once the First Felon–elect began revealing his choices to run the government, which is shaping up to be a Who-Shouldn’t-Be-Who assemblage of (mostly) unqualified or grossly inappropriate sycophants, with a couple of accused sexual predators thrown in. Our collective category of Cabinet hopefuls and administration appointees, the Nominees, topped the A.W.I. (49.2 percent), followed by that tiresome kibitzer without a portfolio Elon Musk (34.2 percent).
In a relatively normal world—not expected again until 2028 at the earliest—the rest of the formidable field, which included Jeff Bezos, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anthony Weiner, and Prince Andrew, would have been contending for top honors. Not last week.
And this week? The verdict is yours, but first:
“Americans … do not ever want to be forced to take another vaccine that the government is telling us to take after they created a deadly virus.”
—Marjorie Taylor Greene
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
MARK ZUCKERBERG
Collaborated with the rapper-producer T-Pain to release—under the name Z-Pain—an acoustic cover version of Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz’ 2002 hit “Get Low” as an anniversary present for his wife, Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg explained that the song “was playing when I first met Priscilla at a college party, so every year we listen to it on our dating anniversary.” The “lyrical masterpiece,” as he called it, features him singing, “Oh, skeet-skeet, motherfucker / Oh, skeet-skeet, goddamn / Shawty crunk (shawty crunk), so fresh, so clean / Can she fuck? That question’s been harassing me.” Who says romance is dead?
2.
RUDY GIULIANI
The former mayor, who owes $148 million for having defamed two election workers, twice posted on X that he “can’t buy food,” railing that the prosecuting law firm and presiding judge have “seized my measly checking account.” According to Law & Crime, “both posts included a link to GiveSendGo—a Catholic crowdfunding website known for allowing far-right causes and neo-Nazis to raise money—where the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has a page titled ‘Rudy Giuliani Defense.’” As of the end of the week, the Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund had raised $135,846 toward its $250,000 goal.
3.
ERIC HOVDE AND KARI LAKE
These two Republican Senate-race losers were loath to accept the results. In Wisconsin, Hovde took a week to acknowledge he’d been defeated by Tammy Baldwin, and even then cast doubt on the ballots’ “integrity” and “legitimacy.” In Arizona, the far-right election denier Lake, who had also vehemently disputed her loss in the 2022 governor’s race, took her time but finally conceded that she’d finished second to Ruben Gallego. Or sort of conceded. “I can say for certain that truth will never stop mattering to me,” she said in a video. “I will never stop fighting for the state I love.” So remember: When Republicans lose, it’s voter fraud. When they win, well, that’s historic.
4.
THE NOMINEES
The new crop included the oil-and-coal enthusiast Doug Burgum for secretary of the interior. Brendan Carr, author of the F.C.C. chapter for Project 2025 was appointed to run the F.C.C.—or, as he put it, to “dismantle the censorship cartel.” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the television personality disdained by much of the medical community for promoting debunked theories and unproven treatments, was picked to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (Lindsey Graham: “Seems qualified to me.”) And from the world of professional wrestling, an education secretary, Linda McMahon. Meanwhile, former representative Joe Walsh, a Republican, noted that director-of-intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard “couldn’t get a job in our intelligence community. Because she’s too compromised by Russia.” Unvetted secretary-of-defense nominee Pete Hegseth continued to maintain that his relationship with a woman who has accused him of sexual assault was consensual—although he paid her off. As for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services nominee was warned by Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “Don’t get too popular, Bobby.”
5.
SARAH PALIN
Forgotten but not gone. According to the Daily Mail, “the former Alaska governor and G.O.P. vice-presidential candidate, an early and vocal supporter of Trump since at least 2011, made a series of cryptic posts to social media with screengrabs of other users who were questioning why she had not been drafted into his Cabinet.” In one, “Palin posted a screengrab of a text message with someone asking her: ‘What about you?’ to which she replied ‘Thank you.’” Hey, there’s still time!
6.
Matt Gaetz
Following more damning allegations about sex parties and Venmo payments to under-age women (all denied), Matt Gaetz, the 343,227,612th most qualified American to be attorney general, withdrew from consideration, showing that, despite all evidence to the contrary, there just might be a limit.
7.
CHARLOTTE RUSSE
The creamy pastry threatened to dominate several news cycles after Whoopi Goldberg, celebrating her birthday on The View, claimed that a landmark family-run Staten Island bakery had “refused to make them for me,” speculating that “perhaps they did not like my politics.” (Staten Island is deep red; Goldberg, deep blue.) The bakery’s explanation was that the boiler was broken when Goldberg called and they couldn’t accept a large order. Cue the outpouring of support and demands (from local politicians) for an apology. “It does seem a little odd,” Goldberg said in a video, that “somehow they were able to accept an order of a different 48 of the same dessert when somebody else called without using my name.” If only she’d ordered a nice cookie assortment we might not be in the midst of this national crisis right now. —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
