Lauren Sánchez, so long an A.W.I. bridesmaid but never a bride—until this year. Sánchez won this thing for the second time in six weeks with 31.4 percent of your votes, on the strength of—how fitting—her hen party in Paris. (Dare we hope for more victories? The wedding is still ahead.) Sánchez’s win was impressive, given that the runner-up, Donald Trump (27.7 percent), had a banner week, with his appalling Oval Office ambush of yet another head of state, his corrupto—sorry, crypto—dinner, and his paranoid, middle-of-the-night posting about “BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.... BEYONCÉ.... OPRAH, AND BONO???”
Kristi Noem was third (18.3 percent), and let’s give a warm A.W.I. welcome to newcomers Bill Belichick and Jordon Hudson (fourth, with 14 percent). On to this week’s poll, but first:
“The United States of America is hotter now than we’ve ever seen it.... It’s true. We have the hottest country in the world, and the whole world is talking about it.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
KIM JONG UN
When a new, 5,000-ton destroyer tipped off-balance upon launching at a North Korean shipyard last week, ending up on its side, the Supreme Leader—who was there to witness the proud moment—felt displeased and embarrassed. Also angry, and ominously so. It was a “criminal act,” Kim said, one that “severely damaged the dignity and pride of our nation in an instant.” And sure enough, now the other tiny, triple-wide dictatorial shoe has dropped: the shipyard’s chief engineer and two other officials have been detained.
2.
LIZ TRUSS
Marginalized at home, Britain’s shortest-serving, durably unpopular former prime minister continues to try to scrape out a spot for herself on the U.S. political scene. The pro-MAGA Truss, who spoke at a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in February, has resurfaced in Jeff Bezos’s revamped “personal liberties and free markets”–friendly Washington Post Opinions section, with a typically self-serving essay headlined “Elites Killed My Pro-Growth Agenda. Trump Can’t Let Them Stop His.”
3.
DONALD TRUMP
What agenda, Liz? The clueless president continued flip-flopping on tariffs before the U.S. Court of International Trade—three judges, two of them Republican-appointed, one by Trump himself—unanimously blocked his oversold “Liberation Day” decree (an appeals court quickly froze the decision). Took offense at the acronym TACO—adopted by some Wall Street analysts for “Trump Always Chickens Out” to describe his tariff policy—and berated the reporter who asked him about it (“Don’t ever say what you said, that’s a nasty question”). Earlier in the week, informed graduating West Point cadets, “There’s a lot of trophy wives—doesn’t work out.” A day later: “[Putin] has gone absolutely CRAZY! … I don’t like it, and it better stop.” (Gave the Russian leader a deadline of “two weeks”—something of a tradition, as it’s the third time since April Trump has announced that ultimatum.) Dispensed pardons to 25 people, including a pair of convicted $30 million fraudsters whose daughter spoke at the Republican National Convention; a Trump-supporting sheriff who’d been convicted of fraud and bribery; and a tax cheat whose mother recently attended a $1 million per person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
4.
THE SUSSEXES
The A.W.I.’s most consistently competitive couple stayed in the mix. The duke and duchess have reportedly reorganized their Montecito staff in a less informal, more hierarchical way that—what do you know!—mimics the traditional structure of the royal family, against whom they’ve so long, and so tediously, rebelled. Harry flew to a Shanghai tourist conference, invited, The Times of London noted, “in his capacity as the founder of Travalyst, a sustainable travel organisation whose motto is ‘changing the way we travel, for good.’” And the New York Post said that the alleged falling-out between Meghan Markle and former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful “goes deeper” than a cover Markle failed to get in 2022. The duchess, it’s claimed, wanted “the covers of UK and US Vogue simultaneously,” plus “control over [the] photographer, writer, final edit, photos, cover lines.” As one source said, “Nobody gets that. Not even Beyoncé.”
5.
BORIS JOHNSON
Another former British prime minister, much longer-serving than his successor, Truss, but really not much more fondly remembered, has become a father for the ninth time (most experts agree): a girl, born to Johnson’s wife, Carrie. The couple has four children, and he has five others “of public knowledge”—as the press sometimes puts it—four with one of his previous wives and one (or, just possibly, two; he’s never said) the result of an affair. But Johnson should have time for them all: these days, he’s a freelance writer.
6.
Linda MCMAHON
The secretary of education, who last week defended Trump’s intention to dismantle the department she ostensibly runs, this week attempted to reassure anyone who might be in a tizzy about the government pulling federal funding for academic research. “Universities should continue to be able to do research,” McMahon told CNBC, “as long as they’re abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.” Where’s Trump University when you need it?
7.
Sydney Sweeney
When the Euphoria actress appeared in a soap commercial last year, sudsing herself in a bathtub, the company was allegedly “inundated” with requests by fans for the bathwater in which she sat, reported The Times of London. So, Sweeney had the water infused into bars of soap, which she’s now selling. Collectors be advised: the soap bars are a limited edition of 5,000. “It’s weird in the best way,” Sweeney said, which makes one wonder what she considers “weird in the worst way.”
8.
EMMANUEL MACRON
“There’s a video showing me joking and teasing my wife and somehow that becomes a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe, with people even coming up with theories to explain it,” said the president of France, who acknowledged that the clip of Brigitte Macron shoving him in the face as they’re about to disembark a plane in Hanoi is genuine. The couple then makes a frosty descent to the tarmac, with the First Lady apparently refusing to take Macron’s arm. We prefer to see things the way, according to CNN, “a source close to the president” chose to: it was nothing more than a “moment of togetherness.” Bien sur!
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
