In A.W.I.’s recent polling, same as in November’s election, Donald Trump and J. D. Vance proved to be … One hesitates to call them the “winning ticket”—there’s nothing winning about either of them. So let’s say the “ticket that prevailed.” Trump, unraveling even more than usual—he boasted again about that old cognitive test he’d “ACED … something that is rarely seen!”—pulled down 42.2 percent, and his vice president got 23.2 percent for inflicting himself on the innocent Cotswolds, who had been quietly minding their own business. Third place went to the determinedly Cotswold-free Sussexes (14.4 percent), and fourth to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (9.7 percent), whose long-suffering neighbors in Palo Alto probably wish the couple would just go to the Cotswolds, or, really, anyplace.
Ready for another round? First this:
“WE WILL BEGIN … by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
—Donald trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Apparently backtracking now from the one possibly sane idea he had. “The draft of an upcoming government report suggesting ways to improve the health of American children does not recommend severe restrictions on pesticides and ultra-processed foods,” reported ABC News, an omission that “would constitute a win for the agriculture industry.” So much for MAHA. Otherwise, through such initiatives as scrapping the mRNA vaccines—the ones Trump had called a “medical miracle”—and feuding with the American Academy of Pediatrics, it’s been business as usual for Kennedy, as he continues to do all he can to make the United States science-hostile, medicine-phobic, and highly contagious.
2.
DONALD TRUMP
The most significant information to emerge from the Trump-Putin Alaska summit was contained in the documents someone from the U.S. entourage forgot next to a hotel printer: the menu for a ceremonial lunch that never happened. Trump is in feverish pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize, but in Alaska he was in way over his bloated, orange head—no less an authority than former British P.M. Boris Johnson called it “just about the most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy.” Things went marginally better at the White House with Volodymyr Zelensky and his posse of European leaders, there to massage Trump’s ego and try to keep him from selling out Ukraine to Putin completely. The week began auspiciously, with Trump posting a single, cryptic word on his social-media account: “bela.” (Bartók? Fleck? Lugosi?) It wound down with the stunted Trumpian thumbs pointing skyward for Benjamin Netanyahu (“He’s a war hero. I guess I am too”), though not for the Smithsonian Institution, which is “OUT OF CONTROL” with its annoying references to “how bad Slavery was,” and—in a watershed moment for the Retribution Presidency—an F.B.I. search of the home of Trump’s former national-security adviser turned critic John Bolton.
3.
MELANIA TRUMP
The normally reclusive First Lady threatened to sue Hunter Biden for $1 billion over what her lawyers characterized as a “false, disparaging, defamatory and inflammatory” claim that she’d been introduced to her husband by Jeffrey Epstein. (Biden’s measured response: “F— that, that’s not going to happen.”) Then, using that same husband as a courier, she sent a “peace letter” to Vladimir Putin on behalf of the children caught in the Russia-Ukraine war: “Every child shares the same quiet dreams in their heart.... Yet in today’s world, some children are forced to carry a quiet laughter … a silent defiance against the forces that can potentially claim their future.” Putin, though, could “restore their melodic laughter … with a stroke of the pen today.” Well, that ought to do it. This means Donald might have to share the Nobel with Melania, but that’s for them to sort out. (Unless Newsweek threw a wrench in the works by reporting that Elon Musk’s A.I. tool, Grok, concluded that Melania’s letter “‘shows strong signs of AI generation’ with ‘minor human edits for tone.’” Which, many people are saying, could also describe the First Lady herself.)
4.
MARCO RUBIO
Hinting at “evidence” of “links to terrorist groups”—without providing any such evidence—the secretary of state halted temporary medical-humanitarian visas for starving and injured young children from Gaza “while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used.”
5.
LAURA LOOMER
Not content to let Rubio take credit for the above, the self-described “pro-white nationalist” and Trump confidante proudly claimed that halting those visas was the result of her online agitating. (“I don’t care if they are kids. The US is full”).
6.
MSNBC
Ahead of its spin-off from Comcast’s NBCUniversal to Versant, the cable-news channel announced it would be changing its name to MS NOW. As in, My Source News Opinion World. My Source News Opinion World? One wonders what ideas for a new name were rejected. Let’s hope they’re in some document left by someone next to some printer.
7.
KRISTI NOEM
Even when she’s not hyperactively seeking attention, the Homeland Security secretary can’t stay out of the news. Noem has been living rent-free in a waterfront Washington home normally reserved for the Coast Guard’s top admiral. “Due to threats and security concerns, she has been forced to temporarily stay in secure military housing,” according to a department statement. This “has raised eyebrows among current and retired Coast Guard officials,” The Washington Post reported, and warned her decision “could set off a chain reaction that could displace other senior members of the service in a situation with limited housing. Current and former Coast Guard members have also cited Noem’s frequent use of a Coast Guard Gulfstream aircraft as a point of tension.”
8.
THE EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL
Trigger warning: this item contains references to trigger warnings. This summer’s edition of the festival, with its “lavish” deployment of content warnings, “has provoked amusement, irritation and occasionally anger at spoilers,” reported The Times of London. One show, audiences are advised, includes “themes of grief; climate anxiety and birth anxiety; and descriptions of extreme weather events, drowning, burning and suicide,” another, “themes of ableism, addiction, blood, death, mental illness, transphobia and strong language.” The play A Gambler’s Guide to Dying contains “references to terminal illness” and, equally shocking, a film called Young Mothers features “pregnancy and childbirth.” The Times noted that “one of the few films to escape a warning is The Golden Spurtle, a documentary about the world porridge-making championships.” Makes sense. Is there any space safer than the one created by porridge?
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
