It was another busy week for Donald Trump. Nothing to do with his obligations and duties as president—only a loser would waste time on that—but rather with his frantic attempts to divert attention from his bromance with the late pedophile/sex trafficker/tax adviser Jeffrey Epstein. Trump was duly rewarded: 60.2 percent of your votes and first place in our poll. Hunter Biden’s f-bomb-flecked rant about all the people who had failed to support his father earned him second (13.5 percent), and the forgotten-but-not-gone Sussexes finished third (11.3 percent).
And now, a whole new week of high-profile misbehavior. But first:
“I’m not focused on conspiracy theories.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
JEFFREY EPSTEIN
The aforementioned creep, though dead, continued to dominate the news—much to Donald Trump’s dismay, for all kinds of reasons. Here’s one of them: Google searches for Epstein’s name were up 1,900 percent in a week, interest in the topic outpacing even interest in Trump. What, for a desperately needy, narcissistic Attention Whore, could be worse?
2.
DONALD TRUMP
Washington was making him squirm, so Trump lugged his presidency over to Scotland to tour his properties and cheat at golf. (A video of one of Trump’s caddies sneakily dropping a golf ball in an agreeable spot on the green for the president—then just pulling up in a golf cart—to “find” it went viral.) What else? Claimed, falsely, that Beyoncé had received $11 million from the Kamala Harris campaign for an endorsement. Demanded, through his lawyers, that Rupert Murdoch be deposed within 15 days in his $10 billion Epstein-related defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal. Complained that Epstein “stole” the teenage Virginia Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago, raising all sorts of questions. Announced the construction of a no-doubt-exceptionally-tasteful $200 million “state ballroom” in the White House. Weaponized the Environmental Protection Agency to repeal the established scientific fact that climate pollution is harmful to humans. Copped to “uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention”—no, wait, sorry, that was how the White House characterized the South Park episode that showed a bare-naked (and barely endowed) Trump in bed with Satan. But it’s not as if Trump isn’t deeply engaged with global affairs: he was “disappointed” but “not done with” Putin, gave the Russian leader another ceasefire deadline to ignore, and acknowledged that there was “real starvation stuff” in Gaza. Then it was back to the links.
3.
TULSI GABBARD
The director of national intelligence, whose history of coziness with autocratic leaders has raised eyebrows, insisted that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump—the conclusion reached by U.S. intelligence, several reports and investigations, and a bipartisan Senate review—never happened, and was in fact (what else?) part of an Obama-instigated conspiracy to lead a “coup” against Trump. But Susan Miller, a former C.I.A. officer who worked on the 2017 intelligence report, told NBC News, “The director of national intelligence and the White House are lying, again. We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected.” At least Gabbard did her job, inserting an Epstein-free story into the news cycle.
4.
ERIC ADAMS
Hitting his campaign stride, New York City’s nominal mayor was sued by a former N.Y.P.D. commissioner, who accused him of directing the department so it “functions as a racketeering enterprise.” (City Hall disputed the allegations.) Adams criticized his rival Andrew Cuomo for having resigned as governor just because he was being investigated for sexual harassment. “Personal strife should not cause you to leave office,” the mayor told the New York Post. “During my personal strife, I stepped up. I continued to deliver for the city.” (Translation: “Personal strife” = federal indictments for fraud and bribery. “Deliver for the city” = scramble to remain in power.) Anyway, those indictments suspiciously coincidentally went away following Adams’s serial prostrations before Trump. Even so, the mayor is now a defendant in a Justice Department lawsuit charging New York with “interfering with enforcing this country’s immigration laws.” Just a little more personal strife up from which to step!
5.
ANDREW CUOMO
The former governor, meanwhile, trashed Adams for having met with Trump before the resolution of his corruption case: “He turned his back on New Yorkers. New Yorkers will never forget that.” Cuomo’s radically re-booted campaign strategy involves actual campaigning—i.e., climbing out of his black Dodge Charger muscle car and interacting awkwardly with voters. Plus, the unveiling of an entirely new persona: “So much,” Cuomo declared dismissively, “for being nice.” Which is one thing nobody, detractor or supporter, has ever accused him of.
6.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL
And why not come full circle, Epstein-wise? Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for the sex trafficking of minors, met with Todd Blanche, Trump’s former lawyer now at the Justice Department, sparking so much speculation about a possible pardon—and what she might say or do in exchange for it—that Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded copies of the interview recordings and transcripts. Maxwell, who has also filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, said she’d testify before Congress, provided she had the questions in advance and was given immunity. All that Trump, her potential benefactor, managed to articulate when asked about it was, “Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it.”
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
