Last week’s voting produced more of a horse race than the A.W.I. has seen lately. Yes, Donald Trump finished first (35 percent)—breaking Pete Hegseth’s one-week winning streak—largely on the strength of his agitating for a Nobel Prize and lying about having, years ago, warned everyone about Osama bin Laden, if only the world had listened, etc. But not far behind was publicity-shy Kristi Noem (23.2 percent), who weighed in on Portland terrorists and on the kinds of football fans who should be attending the Super Bowl (“law-abiding Americans who love this country”). Solidly in third place was the surprise Paris Fashion Week attendee Meghan Markle (14.8 percent).
Ahead, new opportunities for spotlight-hogging. But first:
“Portland, Oregon, I mean — every time I look at that place it’s burning down. There are fires all over the place.”
—donald trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
MARC BENIOFF
A Telegraph headline summed it up: “Silicon Valley’s Wokest Billionaire Gets on Board the Trump Train.” Benioff, the erstwhile liberal-leaning philanthropist who founded the software company Salesforce and owns Time magazine, grabbed plenty of attention (and created plenty of dismay back home) when he told The New York Times, “I fully support the president. I think he’s doing a great job,” and said he hoped Trump would send the National Guard to San Francisco. (He later apologized.) Salesforce, The New York Times noted, “has hundreds of software contracts with the federal government.” Benioff’s remarks cost him a Salesforce board member, but won the support of Elon Musk.
2.
PRINCE ANDREW
From Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir: “He was friendly enough, but still entitled — as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.” Also, an e-mail the hapless Andrew sent Jeffrey Epstein just after the publication of that infamous photo of the prince with his arm around the teenage Giuffre, with Ghislaine Maxwell grinning in the background, belied his claim that he’d had no contact with the sex-trafficking financier after 2010. “I’m just as concerned for you!,” Andrew wrote to Epstein in 2011. “Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!” Dolt!!!! But not Duke of Dolt: by week’s end, Andrew had announced that, following a “discussion” with his big brother, he would “no longer use my title or the honors which have been conferred upon me.” (He will retain “Prince,” however.) It’s said to be the first removal of a dukedom among senior British royals in more than a hundred years.
3.
KRISTI NOEM
The intrepid Homeland Security secretary traveled to war-torn Portland, Oregon, where her swashbuckling bravery was captured in a video clip posted on X by a 19-year-old influencer who happens to be a friend of Barron Trump’s. The accompanying text describes how Noem “stared down violently Antifa rioters on the roof of an ICE facility.” (Based on the video evidence, the English translation would be: Noem “peered down briefly at a few bored-looking protesters, one of whom was dressed as a chicken, from the roof of an ICE facility.”) Appeared on video at T.S.A. airport checkpoints claiming that “Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our T.S.A. employees are working without pay”—even though the Hatch Act stipulates that federal programs be “administered in a nonpartisan fashion.” Some airports have declined to show the propaganda.
4.
J. D. Vance
The vice president offered a contrarian view on those hundreds of racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, violent messages Politico brought to light—“I love Hitler,” rape as “epic,” jokes about gas chambers and “watermelon people” and not trusting Jews, and so on—posted by Young Republican leaders, whose ages ranged from 24 to 35 years old. Vance’s shoulder-shrugging take: “That’s what kids do.”
5.
DONALD TRUMP
Actually accomplished something. But even as he flew to the Middle East to take his “peace in our time” victory lap, Trump was struggling with the larger implications. “I don’t think there’s anything going to get me in heaven,” he told a reporter. “I think I’m not, maybe, heaven-bound.” Otherwise, it was business as usual: “Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time,” he posted. (Maybe he should talk to Benioff about that.) Posted that “THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6,” even though it was Trump’s F.B.I. at the time. Threatened Spain (tariffs), Argentina ($20 billion bailout contingent on how the nation votes in next week’s presidential election), China (trade standoff involving soybeans and cooking oil), and Boston (might deny the city several World Cup matches because it had been “taken over” by crime). Nevertheless, continued to work to preserve the fragile Middle East peace, telling Hamas to disarm or he’d do it for them, “quickly, and perhaps violently,” and suggesting to the head of Israel’s Knesset, “Hey, I have an idea, Mr. President. Why don’t you give [Bibi Netanyahu] a pardon?”
6.
KATIE PORTER
A rough patch for the Democratic representative and would-be governor of California, as unflattering videos began to surface. In one, Porter berates a staffer for being visible in the background of a Webinar she was recording. (“Get out of my fucking shot!”) In another, an increasingly prickly Porter is interviewed by CBS reporter Julie Watts—until the candidate abruptly ends the sit-down, complaining about “seven follow-ups to every question.” But for the all-important third, trend-establishing example, leave it to deepfake technology, specifically “an 18-second AI-generated video in which Porter appears to repeatedly slap Watts, wrestle with her, throw her to the floor and stomp on her,” according to Newsweek. “The video has since racked up more than 1.2 million views.”
7.
BUDDY CARTER
No sooner had Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize than Carter, a right-wing Republican congressman from Georgia, who has announced a Senate run next year, issued a press release declaring that “no one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Donald J. Trump, the Peace President.... The world is forever indebted to him.” Elaborating on Fox News, he said, “I’m introducing a resolution for Congress today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize.” Presumably, Carter will keep the Nobel Committee in the loop as things progress.
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
