Even as Donald Trump’s moral and leadership failings are rapidly being joined by cognitive ones, the frightening decline of that entire repellent package—when further decline didn’t seem possible—is working wonders for him in the Attention-Whore Index: he won again, with 31.5 percent of your vote. J. D. Vance’s aggressive dissemination of Neanderthal views got him second place (24.1 percent). Over in Montecito-lot, chronic vexing issues ranging from the existential (whither Harry at 40?) to trademark matters (whither American Riviera Orchard?) landed the Sussexes in third (19 percent). And the specter of Trump’s good friend “Leon” Musk, as he has mistakenly called him, basically running the government earned the creepy entrepreneur fourth place (13.4 percent).
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
TUCKER CARLSON
The Nazi-curious former Fox News star and current Trump confidant invited a Holocaust revisionist to his podcast, calling Darryl Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” Cooper said that Winston Churchill, not Adolf Hitler, was “the chief villain” in World War II and that there wasn’t any genocide; it’s just that the Nazis “were completely unprepared to deal with millions and millions of prisoners of war … and they just threw these people into camps and millions of people ended up dead.”
2.
ELON “LEON” MUSK
If he maintains his current annual growth rate—financially, that is—Musk will become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, according to a report by Informa Connect Academy, which apparently tracks such things. Bizarrely (how otherwise?) offered to get Taylor Swift pregnant after her endorsement of Kamala Harris, which she’d signed “Childless Cat Lady.” (“Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”)
3.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump Media, in which he has a $2 billion stake, is in free fall. Said of one of his recent sexual-abuse accusers, “She would not have been the Chosen One. She would not have been the Chosen One.” At the Economic Club in New York, responded to the question “Can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable?” this way: “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue…. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the child care is child care, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” Clarifying, he added that “I will prevent World War III, and I am the only one that is going to do it.” Peaked on Tuesday night with his embodiment of a shouting, delusional, hate-and-lie-spewing, angry outpatient (“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! The people that came in. They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the pets of the people that live there”) you’d cross the street to avoid—a 90-minute meltdown that was, in his assessment, “the best debate, personally, that I’ve ever had.... A very important debate.” In fact, “We’re getting polls that show 88 to 11. We’re having a lot of great polls. Lots of polls. You see the polls. The polls are indicating we got 90 percent, 60 percent, 72 percent, 71 percent, and 98 percent.”
4.
THE 48 PERCENT …
… of likely voters who, when polled last week by The New York Times and Siena College, claimed they would vote for the above specimen.
5.
MELANIA TRUMP
In a clip promoting her forthcoming book, Melania, the former First Lady says, “The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience. Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.” The truth? The truth is conspiracy theories can help sell books—and candidates.
6.
ERIC ADAMS
(First, the routine caveat: Adams has not been accused of any crimes.) There are probably still a few people in the New York City mayor’s administration who aren’t the subject of federal investigations, but those numbers are dwindling. Last week, agents used subpoenas and search warrants to gather up electronic devices belonging to the police commissioner (who has since resigned), the commissioner’s twin brother, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor, and several other associates. The moves are said to be unrelated to the ongoing federal corruption inquiry into Adams’s 2021 campaign. “As a former law enforcement person, the goal is to follow the law,” posted the mayor, who is running for re-election.
7.
THE WINDSORS
As the second anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s death was marked, it was also noted by The Times of London that when Prince Harry turns 40—this weekend—he will be “eligible to receive millions of pounds from a family trust fund set up by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.” The newspaper also reported that King Charles was “keen to find a way to ‘solve’ the issue of the Duke of York’s living situation.” But, according to the New York Post, Charles’s efforts to bounce his squatter brother, Andrew, from Royal Lodge have left “Princess Anne, Prince Edward, and his wife Sophie … unhappy with the monarch’s handling of things.”
8.
J. D. VANCE
Made it clear that while he didn’t like school shootings per se, incidents such as the one at Apalachee High School, in Georgia, last week were “a fact of life,” and that the only solution was (surprise) more guns in schools. Posted a false claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, abducting and eating family pets. (Vance’s subsequent glib backpedaling was undermined when the top of the G.O.P. ticket brought it up during the presidential debate and wouldn’t let it go—see above.) And now we come full circle for A.W.I. this week: the possible future vice president of the United States declined to denounce Tucker Carlson for playing fawning host to that Hitler apologist, and in fact Vance plans to appear with Carlson at a rally in Pennsylvania next week. —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
