Facts are still facts, at least occasionally, and it’s a fact that last week Donald Trump’s A.W.I. winning streak was halted at 12, despite his having polled at a solid 31 percent. It was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who beat him (48.3 percent), and he hardly came out of left field, even if his ideas do. Kennedy earned his fourth A.W.I. victory using essentially the same approach that has served Trump so well: locating that sweet spot where ignorance meets arrogance, and then acting it out on a public stage. Third place (6.3 percent) went to Will Smith, for being the willing object of worshipful A.I.-enhanced audiences, and fourth (5.3 percent) to Prince Andrew, for being Prince Andrew.
On to the next competition, but first:
“Amazing phenomenon — Any Country that relies on Windmills is DEAD.”
—Donald Trump
The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
SCOTT BESSENT
The Trump housing secretary, Bessent, got into a scrap with the Trump Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, at the inaugural dinner at Executive Branch, the MAGA-heavyweight-heavy Georgetown club, Politico reported. “Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you,” Bessent allegedly said to Pulte during cocktails, adding, “I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.” According to eyewitnesses, Bessent first wanted Pulte bounced—“It’s either me or him”—then offered him another option: “We could go outside.... I’m going to fucking beat your ass.” Sadly, nothing further transpired; both men stayed for dinner, “placed on opposite ends of the table.”
2.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Last week’s A.W.I. winner remains in the mix because he insists on remaining in the mix. Not that anyone really expected him to resign, although many Republican and Democratic politicians, health officials, and even members of the Kennedy family have called for him to. No, he’ll stick around to finish the job, “reject[ing] facts that do not fit his theories and cast[ing] out experts who are not aligned with him,” as The New York Times noted. That’s not a problem, you see, when you know so much more than everyone else.
3.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump glided incoherently past more economic bad news—almost a million fewer jobs, unemployment climbing to its highest level since 2021—by saying, “The real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up.” Got booed at the U.S. Open. Got booed going to dinner near the White House. Got booed at Yankee Stadium. Declared war on an American city (posting, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” along with helicopter emojis and an image of himself in an Apocalypse Now getup). Backpedaled (“We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities”). Worked his trademark global diplomacy (“This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”—yes, that’ll bring peace to Gaza). Hosted a dinner for lawmakers in the now concrete-paved White House Rose Garden to launch his new “Rose Garden Club,” which, according to a White House spokesman, is “the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world.” Remained defiant (“a dead issue”) as more evidence linking him to Jeffrey Epstein surfaced—the “nonexistent” letter that exists, the nude drawing (“I never wrote a picture in my life”), the matching signature (“It’s not my signature”). And we’re supposed to believe that this person who lies about everything is, in this instance, telling the truth.
4.
OLIVER NORTH and FAWN HALL
Hand us those tissues! The most riveting and photogenic figures of the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra scandal—illegal secret arms sales to Iran to surreptitiously fund Nicaraguan rebels—North (a lieutenant colonel in the Marines) and Hall (his secretary, who assisted in his evidence-shredding), their relationship then strictly professional, have, 40 years later, tied the knot. North, now 81, was convicted on three felony charges that were overturned because he’d been granted immunity for testifying, and he subsequently became a political commentator, author, president of the N.R.A., and, last year, a widower. Hall, now 65, was granted immunity for testifying—against North—and later worked as a TV reporter, dated Rob Lowe, married Doors manager Danny Sugerman, and 20 years ago was widowed. North and Hall reconnected at his wife’s funeral last year and—according, appropriately, to Michael Isikoff, who covered the Iran-Contra story for The Washington Post—were married last month in Arlington, Virginia. Secretly. (How else?)
5.
ELON MUSK
You remember him—the man-child who led the DOGE charge? World’s richest person? Or used to be. A quarterly gain of $101 billion temporarily put Oracle’s Larry Ellison at $393 billion, ahead of Musk’s measly $385 billion. However, now that Musk is again paying attention to Tesla, whose fortunes had nosedived during his manic government-overhaul phase, the board of directors wants to give him a compensation package that, should Musk hit certain profitability targets, would make him the world’s first trillionaire. (The eternal downside: he still has to wake up every morning and be Elon Musk.)
6.
ERIC ADAMS
New York City’s mayor took a meeting with White House officials regarding a possible Saudi Arabia ambassadorship if he ended his re-election run and let Andrew Cuomo—who is trailing almost as badly as Adams—attempt to overtake Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani. Even hedge-fund busybody Bill Ackman posted, “It is time for Mayor Adams to step aside.” But Adams insisted he would not drop out of the race, and by the way, “Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar.”
7.
Peter Mandelson
Not a good week for the now former British ambassador in Washington. Mandelson, who is known in Britain as the “Prince of Darkness” for his ruthlessness and had already survived two career-halting scandals (undeclared bank loan, aiding dodgy businessmen), was sacked after the release of the Epstein “birthday book,” in which he calls the sex-trafficking financier “my best pal.” It didn’t help when Bloomberg News subsequently published a supportive e-mail Mandelson had sent Epstein in 2008 after his conviction in Florida for procuring a minor for prostitution: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain.” Mandelson also met with Trump at the White House this week—wonder what they didn’t talk about.
8.
MORRISSEY
Sure, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers are suing former Police-mate Sting over alleged missing royalties, but for true high drama involving front men and their erstwhile bandmates, we naturally turn to Morrissey. Having announced that he had “no choice but to offer for sale all of his business interests” in the Smiths because he is “burnt out by any and all connections” to his former colleagues, has “had enough of malicious associations,” and “would now like to live disassociated from those who wish me nothing but ill-will and destruction,” Morrissey said this week that the response to his FOR SALE post had been “colossal.” So … we guess all this means no Police or Smiths reunions. Then again, who knows? Look at Oasis. Or Spinal Tap!
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
