A squeaker. Donald Trump broke his three-week losing streak and earned (that, as always, is an understatement) his 50th career Attention-Whore victory with 29.2 percent of your votes. The perennially aggrieved Prince Harry, going on again about his family on television, was a close second (26.9 percent). They were trailed by a cluster of impressive also-rans: the A.W.I. mainstay Marjorie Taylor Greene (11.8 percent); that formidable annual contender known collectively as the Met Gala (10.5 percent); unqualified, science-averse health honcho Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (9.5 percent); and the sporadically literate secretary of education, Linda McMahon (7.9 percent).
This week’s slate in a moment, but first:
“IN JUST THREE MONTHS, TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS (and therefore, record numbers of JOBS!) HAVE BEEN POURING INTO THE USA.”
—Donald trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
GÉRARD DEPARDIEU
Despite 90-year-old Brigitte Bardot’s 11th-hour interview in which she said actors who “grab a girl’s bottom” should be allowed to “get on with their lives,” Depardieu, 76, was convicted of sexually assaulting two women on a movie set in 2021, given an 18-month suspended sentence, ordered to pay the women damages, and added to France’s register of sex offenders. (He has been publicly accused by 20 women.) Depardieu will appeal and face another trial in a year and a half. After the verdict, one of the victims said, “For me, it’s a victory, truly. We are moving forward.”
2.
JOE BIDEN
The former president tried to reclaim a dimming spotlight, to the joy of few. Or few non-Republicans, anyway. In interviews with the BBC and The View, he rejected the idea that he’d experienced any cognitive decline and insisted that, had he stayed on the ticket, he would have won. Biden’s unwelcome, and largely ineffectual, re-emergence was intended to get out ahead of the anticipated spate of books about the latter part of his presidency, and if the one that landed this week, Original Sin (by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson), is any indication, he will have his work cut out for him. Why? Hint: the subtitle is “President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” One can easily conclude that it wasn’t Donald Trump who defeated Kamala Harris—it was Joe Biden.
3.
DONALD TRUMP
Let’s give him this: he’s transparent, at least regarding his ethics-free grifting (i.e., hawking his crypto-currency), auctioning himself off to investors (the caveat: you have to sit across from him at dinner), traveling to the Middle East to look after the Trump family’s business interests, and announcing he was happily accepting the gift of a gaudy new $400 million Air Force One 747-8 from Qatar. (As The New York Times daintily put it, there are “corruption concerns.”) Found the Syrian president, who once had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, to be a “young, attractive guy.” Perhaps Bruce Springsteen summed it up best, kicking off his European tour by telling his Manchester audience that “the America I love … is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”
4.
NEWARK AIRPORT
So, will Air Qatar One be landing at Newark? Unlikely. Three system outages in two weeks at one of the nation’s busiest airports caused delays, but, thankfully, nothing worse. “The transport department’s inspector general has found that at 20 of the nation’s 26 most critical airports, air traffic control staffing falls below the 85% minimum level, with many controllers forced to work 10-hour days and six-day weeks,” reported The Guardian. “After the communications breakdown in Newark, several air traffic controllers there [were] so shaken that they went on ‘trauma leave’, leaving that airport even more understaffed.” The trouble at Newark follows a series of mishaps or near mishaps around the U.S., including January’s deadly jet-helicopter collision, near Washington, D.C. The Trump administration insists it’s going to modernize the system, but for now has instead opted to cut the F.A.A. workforce by 400, including people involved with safety inspections and operations.
5.
SEAN COMBS
In Manhattan, Diddy’s trial got underway with his defense attorney denying the charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, while conceding “his love of baby oil.” The subsequent testimony of Cassie Ventura, Combs’s former girlfriend, confirmed the baby-oil matter (“We used 10 bottles … regular size”) but also included disturbing allegations of beatings, blackmail, and rape.
6.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
The health secretary’s recklessness regarding the public’s health apparently starts at home. Kennedy, The New York Times reported, “posted photos on Sunday of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington, D.C., creek where swimming is not allowed because it is used for sewer runoff.” The National Park Service notes that “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health.... All District waterways are subject to a swim ban.” Unless, that is, you know better than anyone else. After taking his grandkids for that swim through fecal matter, Kennedy participated in a combative congressional hearing and offered the understatement of the week: “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”
7.
THE SUSSEXES
The duke and duchess attended the Los Angeles stop of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour wearing denim and cowboy hats. The hats aside, that night out was the couple’s high point this past week. Fallout from Harry’s BBC interview prompted a New York Times article headlined Can King Charles Heal a Royal Family Crisis Before It’s Too Late? And it surfaced that while in London, the security-conscious prince had been wandering the streets ringing doorbells, reportedly looking for the home of his friends John and Georgina Vaughan. Harry’s luck being what it is, there exists a doorbell security photo, in which the fifth in line to the throne can’t help looking like a well-dressed Amazon courier.
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
