A squeaker last week. Donald Trump’s various and sundry nominees and appointees, who have been our top Attention-Whore Index vote-getters for three weeks running, saw their streak ended by a pair of upstart offshoot challengers: appointee Kimberly Guilfoyle and potential appointee Lara Trump. When the dust settled, Guilfoyle and Trump were at 26.6 percent, and the (other) Trump Nominees were at 25.4 percent. Props also to the hastily relocated tyrant Bashar al-Assad (15.6 percent) and to A.W.I. mainstays the Sussexes (13.3 percent), riding the crest of their Polo documentary series into broadcasting history.
Our final A.W.I. poll of the year presently, but first:
“I had the most secure border we ever had.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
PRINCE ANDREW
More reliably dim-witted folly, just in time for the holidays. “The Duke of York has said he ‘ceased all contact’ with the businessman accused of being a Chinese spy,” reported The Times of London. “Andrew appointed the alleged Chinese spy as his business adviser and promised him links to the heart of the royal family in an apparently serious breach of national security.” After the duke was advised to “do the decent thing” and “voluntarily withdraw from public view over Christmas,” sparing his brother the King the need to ban him from family lunches and other royal appearances, it was reported that he would in fact remain at Royal Lodge.
2.
SILICON VALLEY
Changing their tune turned out to be as easy as A, B, Z: the tech moguls Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) have each donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Zuckerberg and Bezos also paid visits to Mar-a-Lago, as have Google’s Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, and Apple’s Tim Cook. As NPR noted, “Salesforce C.E.O. Marc Benioff recently said of his relationship with Trump, ‘We are turning the page.’ Soon after, the publication he owns, Time, declared Trump ‘Person of the Year.’” Turn, turn, turn.
3.
MITCH McConnell
“I intend to be one of the pushers” pushing back at President Trump, the senator bravely declared to the Financial Times, warning also that “we’re in a very, very dangerous world right now.” Noble words from McConnell, who despite having called Trump “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” and deemed him “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6, 2021, violence, did not vote to impeach him … and admitted to the Financial Times that he voted for him again last month.
4.
THE NOMINEES
Having at least for now steadied the wobbly candidacy of troubled, and troubling, Defense Department aspirant Pete Hegseth, Trump tried to improve the undeserved chances of Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Kash Patel, all of whom have lately spent time in Washington sweet-talking senators. (Good luck with that McConnell guy—his sense of rectitude is, um, unimpeachable.) Meanwhile, Kari Lake, who’s made a career of running for office, losing, and then insisting she won, is Trump’s choice for Voice of America—in other words, the federally funded, independent news operation would be led by a far-right, election-denying (not only hers), frequent critic of “fake news.”
5.
THOSE DRONES
First spotted on November 18 over New Jersey, and seen there nightly since (including above the town of Bedminster, where Trump has a home: “I think maybe I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster”), as well as above seven other states. Amateur experts have concluded that the sightings are—obviously—aliens, or maybe piloted aircraft, but anyway “nefarious in nature,” either Iranian or Chinese, unless it’s finally “Project Blue Beam” (that government-staged fake alien invasion designed to create mass panic and lead to authoritarian control), or hazardous-substance monitors, or possibly even … are you sitting down? … hobby drones. According to Marjorie Taylor Greene, “The government is in control of the drones and refuses to tell the American people what is going on.” Donald Trump posted, “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” (That’s prohibited.) As for Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “We are on it.”
6.
ERIC ADAMS
It’s a wonder New York’s fun-loving mayor has time to run the city. The New York City Campaign Finance Board declared him ineligible for public matching funds of $4.3 million for his re-election campaign. His top adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, became the latest staff member to resign—and to be indicted. More happily for Adams, The New York Times reported that two of his remaining advisers “are quietly trying to secure a ticket for him to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration.” Trump, meanwhile, said he would “look at” a pardon for the mayor, who faces federal charges for bribery and campaign-finance offenses and is to go on trial in April. Or, perhaps, not.
7.
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE
Will the former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr.—with whom, according to him, she still shares “a special bond,” despite his even more special bond with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson—be able to forge yet another bond sufficiently special with the country to which she’s just been named ambassador? Time will tell. But The Independent resurfaced an interview Guilfoyle gave to Fox News in 2015, when Greece, in the throes of an economic crisis, had rejected a bailout the nation regarded as humiliating. “I mean, nobody likes freeloaders. It doesn’t matter if you made great yogurt. I don’t care,” Guilfoyle said, displaying the diplomatic skills that eventually earned her the ambassadorship. “Suck it up. Get up in the morning. Go to work. You guys are retiring too early.” —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
