Last week’s special King Kong–versus–Godzilla edition of the Attention-Whore Index didn’t start out as such. It began with your usual assortment of preening contestants jostling their way toward the starting line: here (again) was the publicity-starved former British prime minister Liz Truss, attacking her own country at a right-wing conference in Hungary and shilling back home for an ex-con bare-knuckle fighter’s new line of whiskey; there was Broadway itself, acting out the high drama of the Patti LuPone kerfuffle (ill-advised comments, wounded backlash, abject apologies, the requisite open letter). But even before the A.W.I. starter pistol went off, Truss, Broadway, and several others had scratched. They understood that once Donald Trump and Elon Musk, all four nostrils flaring, had lumbered into the arena and begun pawing the ground, no one else really stood a chance.
So who won? (Our poll, that is.) It was close: Trump with 51.2 percent. Musk with 48.8 percent. But, as is typically the case in the Index, everyone is a winner.
“We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
MARY MILLER
“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning,” the Republican representative from Illinois posted. “This should never have been allowed to happen. America was founded as a Christian nation.” Putting aside Miller’s staggering, uninformed offensiveness, the “Muslim” who led the prayer, Giani Surinder Singh, is actually a Sikh from New Jersey. Miller is a newcomer to A.W.I. but shows promise: back in 2021, she told a rally, “Hitler was right on one thing: He said, ‘Whoever has the youth, has the future,’” and she also made news in April when she told an interviewer, “The whole climate change is a sham.... God controls the climate, because he controls the sun, and the sun controls the weather, primarily.”
2.
DONALD TRUMP
As his successes piled up—Ukraine, the Middle East, DOGE, tariffs and trade (remember “90 deals in 90 days”?)—the president focused on literally waging war against Americans with his incendiary order to send the National Guard and Marines (cost: $134 million) to California to quell scattered protests. “If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,” Trump lied. “The very incompetent ‘Governor,’ Gavin Newscum, and ‘Mayor,’ Karen Bass, should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.’”
The police-state dry run before this weekend’s $45 million, 7,000-soldier military parade in Washington marking the birthdays of the U.S. Army and Donald Trump (not necessarily in that order) didn’t keep his poll numbers from tanking further: Quinnipiac showed a 38 percent approval rating among registered voters. Still, Trump stuffed himself into a tuxedo for Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, decreed that army bases would revert to Confederate names, and announced rollbacks on environmental initiatives. Maybe he’s simply hoping everyone forgets about that clip of him stumbling on the steps while boarding Air Force One the other day. But, really, what kind of a person makes fun of anyone for doing something like that?
3.
ELON MUSK
The former DOGE honcho returned to his business empire before its losses turned him into a former billionaire as well. But even though Musk left government in a blaze of glory and might understandably need some alone time, he’s kept his A.W.I. bona fides current by posting support for Trump’s assault on Los Angeles and deleting certain earlier Trump-related posts—such as the ones about the president’s connections to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and impeachment. Was this something to do with those “serious consequences” Trump threatened him with should Musk back any Democratic candidates? Or the private phone call he made to Trump? Whatever, the man who once leapt giddily about stages wielding chain saws was reduced to claiming that “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”
4.
“MULTIPLE”
In the end, amid countless daily examples, the straw that proved proverbial was small: “Houston to See Multiple Chances of Storms This Week” (Houston Chronicle). O.K.: “multiple” has its uses. It’s often exactly what’s called for. Unfortunately, in the press and in conversation, the word’s lazy, rampant deployment has long since reached fever pitch. Apparently words like “many,” “several,” “some,” or (God forbid) a specific number will no longer do. Had this irritating tic surfaced in earlier eras, we’d have been treated to songs such as “Multiple Rivers to Cross,” films like Multiple People Like It Hot, and the novel A Tale of Multiple Cities. Maybe it’s already been pointed out multiple times, but: enough.
5.
KASH PATEL
Speaking of fever pitch, the F.B.I. director’s purge of the F.B.I. reached the point where, The New York Times recently reported, “in an effort to hunt down the sources of news leaks, Mr. Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests.” (But who leaked that story? Please, not “multiple sources.” Phew: it was based on “interviews with nearly a dozen current and former law enforcement officials.” See? Not so hard.) Patel was back in the news when he posted about the Los Angeles protests: “Hit a cop, you’re going to jail… doesn’t matter where you came from, how you got here, or what movement speaks to you.” But hit a cop while trying to take over the Capitol Building and overthrow the government? That’s different. Doesn’t matter where you came from, how you got here, or what movement speaks to you … you’re going to be celebrated and pardoned, and like it.
6.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a panel of experts that decides who should get vaccinated. “Of course, now the fear is that the [advisory committee] will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” posted Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician-senator from Louisiana, who went through a lot of tedious public agonizing before voting to confirm Kennedy. But fear not: “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.” How reassuring. No word yet on what Cassidy thinks of Kennedy’s eight new panel choices, four of whom have expressed anti-vax views.
7.
THE SUSSEXES
When H.R.H. Duchess Markle posted a four-year-old video of herself twerking in the delivery room to help induce Princess Lilibet’s birth—in which Prince Harry was also unfortunately visible, providing some emotional-support twerking—reaction varied, from “relatable” to “cringe inducing,” with more leaning toward the latter. Resting but briefly on that flimsy laurel, the publicity-shy Sussexes departed on a two-day visit to Disneyland for Lilibet’s birthday—along with a photographer, to record the special, private family outing—and were soon posting away.
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
