Donald Trump’s joyless stampede through U.S. politics and culture resulted in another poll-topping A.W.I. performance, this one comprising attacks on comedians and an ordered-up prosecution of a former F.B.I. director—just because they (like so many people) got under the insecure, hypersensitive president’s papery, orange-rubbed skin. Trump’s 67.9 percent left normally strong contenders Sarah Ferguson (e-mailing obsequious notes to Jeffrey Epstein) and Melania Trump (flogging engraved Christmas ornaments) in the dust—with 11.5 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively. Even the sentencing of a former president of France to prison barely registered: Nicolas Sarkozy managed only 1.1 percent of your votes.
But that was then. Here comes another competition, right after:
“It’s about justice, really. It’s not revenge.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
DONALD TRUMP
Put the “sinister” U.N.-escalator-sabotage trauma behind him. Invited himself to Pete Hegseth’s military-brass offsite, where he mused on battleships (“I am a very aesthetic person. I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically”), on nuclear weapons (“There are two n-words, and you can’t use either of them”), and on the correct way to descend stairs: “I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly … So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs … Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on.”
Ordered troops into “war ravaged” Portland, Oregon. Promised, in an A.I.-generated video, “every American” access to “MedBed hospitals,” which, as you know, or, anyway, QAnon knows, feature disease-curing, limb-regrowing, age-reversing beds. Stayed focused on decorating: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!!” Only 1,204 days to go.
2.
KRISTI NOEM
The secretary of homeland security, considered responsible by Democrats and Republicans alike for FEMA’s catastrophically slow response to natural disasters, swung into chop-chop mode for Naples, Florida, sending $11 million to rebuild a hurricane-damaged pier—but only after a major financial supporter (and acquaintance) got involved. “A FEMA representative wrote: ‘Per leadership instruction, pushing project immediately,’” ProPublica reported. “Along with fast-tracking the money, Noem flew to Naples on a government plane to tour the pier herself. She then stayed for the weekend and got dinner with the donor.” Yes, it’s who you Noem.
3.
PRINCE HARRY
After Harry visited King Charles, “one unnamed source suggested those in Team Harry had ‘mistaken a brief tea and a slice of cake for the Treaty of Versailles,’” said the Daily Mail. Harry then “lambasted ‘men in grey suits’ at Buckingham Palace, accusing aides of trying to sabotage his reconciliation with the King.” Whereupon The Times of London reported that “the palace has been left ‘saddened and perplexed’ by Prince Harry’s latest claim that the institution is ‘sabotaging’ the relationship with his father.... The news has been met with disappointment by friends of the King.” And round they go.
4.
PRINCE ANDREW
According to newly released files, in May 2000 Prince Andrew flew from New Jersey to Florida “with Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell,” said the BBC. Also, King Charles has “signalled” (as monarchs will) that Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, will not be welcome at Christmas, reported The Times of London. “Sources close to Charles indicated he will keep the duke and duchess at arm’s length after it emerged that Sarah maintained ties with Jeffrey Epstein.... The King has also made clear that he would prefer the pair … to be ‘invisible’ at future gatherings.”
5.
Sean Combs
Diddy’s defense team poured it on especially thick at the hip-hop mogul’s sentencing (he’d been convicted of transporting people across state lines for prostitution), notably by showing a sizzle reel in court. The 11-minute exercise in hagiography—Combs as family man, selfless charity marathoner, philanthropist, school-frequenting inspiration to the young, hospital-frequenting candy striper to the old, family man, gifted musician, family man (did we already mention family man?), a humble, spiritual, compulsive do-gooder who never met anyone who didn’t end up loving him so much—was designed to make people forget anything they might have heard about drug-fueled “freak-off” orgies, sex trafficking, racketeering, and his admitted “love of baby oil.” Did it work? He got 50 months. You decide.
6.
PETE HEGSETH
Summoned hundreds of bemused generals and admirals to the Quantico, Virginia, Marine base to lecture them on the “warrior ethos.” In The New York Times, a retired general complained, “Pete Hegseth spent millions to fly in all of our generals and admirals to rant about facial hair and brag about how many pull-ups he can do, and have Donald Trump sleepwalk through a list of partisan gripes.” And The Washington Post reported that when another retired general “tweeted that German generals were ‘called to a surprise assembly in Berlin’ in 1935 and ‘required to swear a personal oath to the Führer,’ the defense secretary responded with sarcasm. ‘Cool story, General,’ Hegseth wrote.” (Really, no one says enough about Hegseth’s razor wit.) But the war secretary had his preening General Patton moment infringed on by Trump, who couldn’t bear to miss the gathering even as he downplayed it: “It’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’ You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’?”
7.
madison cawthorn
The former North Carolina Republican congressman, who was unseated in 2022—possibly something to do with (as Politico put it) his having “repeatedly maligned his Republican colleagues in Congress, alleging without evidence that some had invited him to cocaine-fueled sex parties [and] was also the subject of a leaked video and sexual misconduct and insider trading allegations, and repeatedly brought a handgun to an airport”—is trying for a comeback. Cawthorn announced he will run for Congress in (where else?) Florida, “to stand with President Trump, defend our conservative values, and fight to stop the radical left every single time.”
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
