After several weeks of frankly listless attention-grabbing, Donald Trump won his second straight poll handily, with 39.5 percent. (Accepting a $400 million gift from another country helped, as did his golf Gulf tour.) Joe Biden—even before the announcement of his cancer diagnosis—rode the wave of those underwhelming rehab interviews and the publication of the first of several legacy-diminishing books to second place (19.2 percent). Third place went to the eternal Sussexes (17.8 percent) and fourth to A.W.I.’s most promising newcomer—now that Elon Musk has crawled back under his rock—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (14 percent).
More fun and games ahead. But first:
“Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT’?”
—donald trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
DINA BOLUARTE
Peru’s president remained in power after the deaths of more than 50 protesters when she cracked down on demonstrations in 2022. She remained in power after “Rolexgate,” a corruption investigation that had police raiding the presidential palace last year in search of undeclared luxury watches. But can she survive the fallout from plastic surgery on her nose? “[Boluarte] has been accused of abandoning her post to have the surgery because she did not inform congress or delegate her powers during her almost two-week absence for an operation she has insisted was ‘essential’ for her health,” CNN reported. Last week, her surgeon said that “of the five procedures he carried out on Boluarte—including rhinoplasty, septoplasty, a procedure on the lower eyelids, and a fat graft on the nasolabial folds (smile lines)—all but one were aesthetic procedures.” Boluarte’s disapproval rating is 95 percent, worse even than you-know-who’s.
2.
DONALD TRUMP
Sandbagged yet another head of state in the Oval Office, using inaccurate videos and erroneous printouts to explain to the Black president of South Africa precisely how whites are being persecuted in his country. (“Death, death, death,” Trump lectured. “Dead white people, dead white farmers.”) Hosted hundreds at his “most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION” (i.e., to the highest bidders) crypto-currency dinner at his Virginia golf club where, many of the guests admitted, they hoped to curry favor with the president. (Corruption? What corruption?) Otherwise continued on his merry way: “Trump’s Actions Are Pushing Thousands of Experts to Flee Government,” went one Washington Post headline about an American “brain drain.” Meanwhile, 1:34 a.m. on Monday found the president still busy cramming for that high-stakes phone call with Vladimir Putin (posting furiously, “HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?… WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? …AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO???”), but to no avail. The Putin call yielded nothing, and on went the war Trump promised to have “settled in one day, 24 hours.”
3.
LAUREN SÁNCHEZ
Recently back from outer space, but partying on in Paris with Eva Longoria, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, fellow astronaut Katy Perry, and others, at her bachelorette bash. “Sánchez posted a photo of herself with the 11 women on the rooftop of Cheval Blanc hotel,” Vogue reported, adding that she “wore a plunging corset top and matching lace-up skirt.” With those festivities over, it was off to be spanked by her fiancé, Jeff Bezos, on board the couple’s $500 million dinghy off Cannes, according to the Daily Mail. “The Amazon founder was spotted with his hand mid-swing to smack the former journalist’s bottom while she lay on a sun lounger,” said the tabloid. The couple were attired in “a leopard-printed thong bikini … with a straw bucket hat” and “a blue short-sleeved shirt, printed swim shorts and aviator sunglasses.” You can decide who wore what.
4.
KRISTI NOEM
Come on, can you really expect the well-accessorized Homeland Security secretary to know what “habeas corpus” means? She’s too busy considering a pitch for a reality-TV show in which immigrants compete “for the honor of fast-tracking their way to U.S. citizenship,” according to the Daily Mail. “Scenes envisaged include one in San Francisco, where the immigrants are sent down a mine to collect the most gold. In Cape Canaveral, Florida … contestants would rush to build and launch a rocket. In Hayward, Wisconsin, they’d struggle to keep their balance on logs.… Teams would raft down the Arkansas River in Colorado, dig clams in Maine, put together a chassis for the 1914 Model T Ford on an assembly line in Detroit, and deliver mail via horseback and ferry from Missouri to Kansas.”
5.
MELANIA TRUMP
Had that show existed 20 years ago, the current First Lady could have been a contestant! Anyway: a nine-foot-tall bronze statue of Mrs. Trump has vanished from outside her hometown of Sevnica, Slovenia, leaving only bronze feet on a tree stump. The New York Times noted that “the expressionless sculpture, its arm raised in a tight wave, never quite captured the heart of Sevnica’s residents,” putting one in mind of the original, who has in some ways been missing even longer. But it seems we’ll have to get used to facsimiles: “I am honored to bring you Melania – The AI Audiobook – narrated entirely using artificial intelligence in my own voice,” she posted on X. “Let the future of publishing begin.”
6.
THE SUSSEXES
What could be more dismaying for the couple than a Daily Mail report that the late Queen had to intervene when Meghan allegedly berated one of her wedding caterers (“Meghan, in this family we don’t speak to people like that”)? Maybe Newsweek observing that while Meghan is always “looking forward,” Harry remains “tied to his past life as a working royal”? No, it’s probably the news that Tom Bower will apparently be publishing a sequel to Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors. More happily for the Sussexes, they celebrated a wedding anniversary, with the duchess posting, “Seven years of marriage. A lifetime of stories,” and thanking all “who have loved and supported us throughout our love story.”
7.
ZAK STARKEY
Not the sort of attention he wanted or possibly even deserved, but how many people can say they’ve been fired as drummer for the Who twice in one month? Perhaps we’ll never know the reasons Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey jettisoned Starkey—their drummer since 1996, and Ringo’s son—quickly rehired him, and then sent him packing a second time. In any event, this could still be a developing story: the band’s apparently final farewell tour doesn’t begin until August, leaving plenty of time for more second-guessing.
8.
Bill Belichick AND Jordon Hudson
This year’s “It couple” (to cynics and haters, more of an “Ick couple”)—the 73-year-old, six-time Super Bowl-winning former head coach for the New England Patriots and his 24-year-old Miss Hancock (Maine) girlfriend—hasn’t exactly been flying under the radar. There was Jordon, managing Belichick’s business affairs, turning up at University of North Carolina football practices (he’s the school’s new $10 million-a-year head coach), interrupting his TV interviews, stepping into his spotlight at every opportunity, and posting, posting, posting. And there was Belichick, watching proudly “in a dimly lit Holiday Inn ballroom” (The New York Times) as Hudson finished third in the Miss Maine USA competition. Not a bad A.W.I. performance, all in all, although we must dock them a few points: when offered the opportunity to talk to the newspaper, the suddenly publicity-shy couple demurred.
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
