It must have been his crowing about a bathroom renovation while, back in the real world, everything—to extend the plumbing metaphor—continued to circle the drain. Donald Trump topped last week’s Attention-Whore Index, with 47.3 percent of your vote. Only six percentage points separated the next four (distant) competitors—Kash Patel, Kim Kardashian, J. D. Vance, and Andrew M. Windsor.
On to this week’s grisly card. But first:
“Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they are down substantially.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
Michael Wolff
Wolff, who is in the midst of suing Melania Trump, featured prominently in the e-mails released this week by the House Oversight Committee. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff wrote of Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein in 2015. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.” And the following year: “There’s an opportunity to come forward this week and talk about Trump in such a way that could garner you great sympathy and help finish him. Interested?” Who knew the muckraking journalist and author also had a gift for career management?
2.
ANDREW M. WINDSOR
Was invited by members of Congress to testify about Jeffrey Epstein, and by members of Parliament to testify about all kinds of things. (Think he’ll show?) The Daily Mail reported that the ex-duke was spending his last days at Royal Lodge “padding around … ranting and muttering.” And a royal biographer told the Daily Mail that Windsor, now a commoner, would probably have to start bowing to his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, who are still princesses.
3.
DONALD TRUMP
Obviously declining, not to mention reclining (dozing on camera for 20 minutes through an Oval Office meeting), Trump is starting to make his “Sleepy” predecessor look like a hyper-articulate, hyper-kinetic teenager. Still working hard, though, to a) deny poor Americans food stamps, and b) sell his tariffs (“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone”). Pardoned Rudy Giuliani. Threatened the BBC with a $1 billion lawsuit. According to Jeffrey Epstein’s e-mails, “spent hours at my house” with one victim, and “of course he knew about the girls.”And, with the Trump Ballroom and Trump Arch already in the works, we had to reckon with an ESPN report that the president “wants the Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him,” and the Treasury’s announcement that the nation’s 250th anniversary would be commemorated with a coin depicting … Donald Trump. On both sides.
4.
Jack Schlossberg
Not his first appearance in A.W.I.—remember his announcement earlier this year that he was boycotting the Met Gala, to which it was not exactly clear he’d been invited? This week the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy launched his campaign for the Manhattan congressional seat being vacated by Jerry Nadler and was the subject of a long profile by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Soon the days when the outspoken Schlossberg was a mere social-media star with 1.7 million followers might be regarded fondly as his shy and retiring phase.
5.
MEGHAN MARKLE
Posted footage of herself strenuously celebrating the Los Angeles Dodgers’ World Series win as a bored-looking Prince Harry sat nearby, and was duly mocked by Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show in a clip that went viral. Harry also wryly apologized to Canada for wearing a Dodgers cap to a game (“When you’re missing a lot of hair on top, and you’re sitting under floodlights, you’ll take any hat that’s available”). Last weekend, the Montecitos attended Kris Jenner’s 70th-birthday bash in Beverly Hills, though photos of them were “mysteriously” deleted from Jenner’s and Kim Kardashian’s party posts, leading to wild speculation about why among people with too much time on their hands. (Prevailing view: the Montecitos requested their removal. “They don’t want to piss off the royal family while they are trying to reconcile,” a source told the New York Post.) Finally, Markle is returning to her earlier low-profile career and appearing in a film—playing herself.
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
