Did you know that at this moment the Trump administration is running what it calls the The Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington DC from June 25th to July 19th to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Me neither. And so it seems did most of the country since the attendance was to, to put it mildly, sparse, consisting of a handful of people wandering around a largely empty mall. There were supposed to be 56 booths each representing a state or territory but even that was was pathetic, with some states making merely a token effort and not even manning the booths, leaving just empty rooms.
The opening event was to be a big concert featuring musical acts, but they could only line up mostly B and C listers and even they pulled out for various reasons, so Trump decided to hold a rally with himself as the speaker. But that too proved to be largely a bust.
Malcolm Ferguson describes what he saw.
The opening weekend of the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., was, to put it simply, miserable. It was extremely muggy, with rain pouring down seemingly every hour. A child rolled around in the grass, crying and screaming, “I. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!!!” Creed’s “Higher” blared over the loudspeakers, and a sparse crowd milled about the various exhibitions. The bare-bones setup—flimsy, fake two-dimensional columns that looked like something Wile E. Coyote would run into while chasing the Road Runner—left much to be desired, as America’s 250th anniversary was celebrated with kitsch and ennui rather than grandeur and appreciation.
More than anything, the event lacked energy—and people. There wasn’t any line or wait to get in. The vibe was more conference-like than celebratory, and the state exhibits varied wildly in effort and presentation.
…What was originally supposed to be a weeks-long blockbuster festival to celebrate the nation turned into a politically charged event, where even B- and C-list artists like Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, and the Commodores dropped out. Soon, nearly a dozen states did too, as it became more and more obvious that Trump was using this event for partisan purposes. As everyone bailed, Trump petulantly declared the fair would instead be kicked off with a rally that he would headline—but even that didn’t get much of a turnout.
Watch people leaving in droves in the middle of Trump’s speech.
Crowds flock towards the exit in the middle of Trump's speech. pic.twitter.com/bM3DPhsM4M
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 25, 2026
Then there were the other glitches.
Power outages impacted some of the fair’s offerings, resulting in melted ice cream, disruptions to the 110-foot-tall Ferris wheel and a shut down of West Virginia’s booth, which experienced air conditioning issues, USA Today reported.
…Photos and video of the small crowds, a lack of seating and near empty food booths were widely mocked on social media, while the Daily Beast called the event “virtually deserted” and The Atlantic noted in a headline: “The Great American State Fair isn’t very great.”
Guardian reporter Adam Gabbatt visited the fair and filed this report. Like anything organized by Trump it was a rip-off.
Things got worse when a Confederate flag had to be removed from a booth at the fair, prompting one of the sponsors to drop out. Then there was more negative publicity as people found out how much things cost at the event: $25 for a pretzel, $23 for a turkey leg, $9 for a lemonade.
But even after paying so much for food, people had nowhere to sit and eat or shelter from the rain.
Kind of disappointing they don’t have anywhere to sit, especially if you get food—you’re just standing,” said Virginia resident Anita, as we were being ushered out of the “rain-or-shine” event Sunday afternoon due to the weather. “Right now, we’re being postponed because of lightning. Where are we all supposed to go? We drove two hours, we’re not just gonna go jump in the car. It’s kinda sad there’s not a backup plan.”
But not having a back-up plan is a feature not a bug with Trump (see: the Iran war)
But Fox News was there, desperately trying to put a good face on the fiasco.
Against this backdrop, Fox News has valiantly tried to put positive spin on the fair, like the White Star Line claiming people had enjoyed a very pleasant four days at sea before the Titanic hit that iceberg. The channel even broadcast live from the fair on Monday, the idea being to champion the event. But, as the journalist Aaron Rupar documented, all that achieved was to prove that very few people were in attendance.
But their efforts were laughably obvious, where they talked of a lot of energy on the mall and huge crowds, when behind them we can plainly see that there was hardly anyone.
TMZ DC with perhaps the most brutal video from Trump's Great American State Fair, showing Dr. Oz on stage bragging to Dean Cain about how big the crowd is, only for the reporter to pan around and show absolutely nobody is there.
Original post: x.com/i/status/207…
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 2:39 PM
(Click on the blue Bluesky link to get the video.)
The desperation is palpable.
"There's a lot of energy on site here."
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 9:58 AM
(Click on the blue Bluesky link to get the video.)
Compare this with the bicentennial celebrations held in 1976.
Blight and others draw a contrast with the bicentennial of 1976 when, amid a glut of commemorative merchandise, New York hosted a floating parade of 16 tall ships and more than 100 smaller vessels from around the world, including the Soviet Union. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, boasting an array of planes and rockets, from the Wright brothers’ flyer to the Apollo 11 command module, opened on the National Mall. Gerald Ford, then the president, did not make the celebration about himself.
I was in graduate school during the bicentennial and a few of us drove down to Washington DC and sat on the mall for the July 4th fireworks. There was a huge crowd and atmosphere then was festive, unlike the sad spectacle so far.
Maybe there will be a large crowd for the fireworks on the 4th. One thing in its favor is that it is a Saturday so that may bring out more people. On the other hand, temperatures that day are expected to hit around 100F. Given that Trump likely gave the fireworks contract to some buddy of his, we cannot guarantee that it will go off without a hitch. Trump seems to have the anti-Midas touch of ruining everything.
Tacky is the best word to describe the event. Even the construction of the main stage was shoddy, with pieces falling from the top.
A large panel fell seemingly dozens of feet from above onto the stage during a rehearsal for a performance at an event for President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250, according to video posted by attorney Aaron Parnas.
“The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250’s July 4th celebration,” Parnas wrote.
After the panel fell, someone can be heard on the video saying, “I was waiting for something like that to happen.”
…“In all seriousness, that actually looks really dangerous for the performers. It’s scary how unsafe this all seems,” observed journalist Pablo Manríquez.
“The sheer incompetence of this administration is really rather astonishing. Everything these people touch is shoddily done. This era is replete with evidence that experience and professionalism actually matter,” wrote author Jennifer Erin Valent.
“If there was ever a metaphor for how historians will look back at Trump’s presidency at this moment in time, it’s this,” wrote health care consultant and National Organization for Women vice president Melanie D’Arrigo.
Oh well, if the attendees want some real excitement, they can go and see the paint peeling off the algae-infested Lincoln Pool. But they better not touch the water if they don’t want to be arrested for terrorism.
I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?
Also, in true ETTD fashion, the fireworks show planned for the 4th will pollute everything in the vicinity and probably kill a lot of people with asthma and other lung impairments if they don’t wear N95 masks or respirators. Usual number of fireworks in DC for the 4th is 20,000 or fewer. For this nightmare? 850,000. I expect they’ll literally burn the place to the ground before they’re done.
mano -- you were there fifty years ago? that’s pretty cool. with family? friends? how’d ya like the kersplosions?
schoolies right? i can’t imagine they were archetypal frat boys.
Did they get the Fyre Festival people to organise this?
Oh, and about those fireworks: Three Hundred Fifty-Four Fireworks per Second.
[My emphasis]
This is what the event’s own website has to say:
Does that sound like a good time to anybody?
Smoke. After a few minutes, the view from ground level will be a lot of smoke, with some fuzzy light effects being somewhat discernible in the background. I expect that one will have to be in the air above the din to see the fireworks.
re arthurhunt@7:
Highly NOT recommended. With the incompetents in charge, you might just experience explosions a little TOO close for comfort in the air above.
Bébé @#3,
I was in my first year of graduate school. I was single. No, we were not frat boys. Five of us nerdy physics grad students (none of whom drank) first drove to Philadelphia to see the fireworks there on the 3rd and then drove the next day to DC to see the big show there on the Mall.
To be quite honest, I am not a big fireworks fan. The first big bursts are fun but then it gets repetitive and I get jaded. The only reason for staying longer is to see the big finale at the end. My going was mainly for the fun of a road trip with friends and to get a feel for Americana.
Dunc @#6,
Thanks for that very informative link. I had not realized how over-the-top the fireworks were going to be. It is typically Trump, thinking that more and bigger is always better.
afternoon delight on the radio, skyrockets in flight, bébé being born thenabouts, truly an iconic USian moment.
Corruption today compared to when USA was born.
Robert Reich: “The Founding Fathers Were Quite Clear” .https://youtube.com/watch?v=pLoRgPbpKwY
Mehmet Oz demonstrating that he has not yet hit rock bottom is the chef’s kiss of this sad spectacle.
One thing I don’t see mentioned here that I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere:
There was a big party setup authorized by Congress back in 2016 called ‘America 250’, with a budget and bipartisan support.
What happened afterwards was that Trump discovered that the ‘America 250’ organization didn’t automatically genuflect to his ideas, and he couldn’t easily pack it with his allies to make it do that, so instead he created ‘Freedom 250’ under the National Park Foundation, packed that with his allies and PragerU people, and then diverted the America250 budget to his own private group instead, with significant amounts siphoned off the top for him and his allies, of course.
That’s another part of why this is such a mess: not only did Trump turn the celebration into a partisan and personal event, he sidelined all of the people that everybody else had been working with before. A lot of the state booths were abandoned in part because the the people who had been setting up what to do had been working with the original America250 before its budget got stolen, and Freedom250 obviously didn’t care about any previous commitments or agreements, especially not with blue states.
From Lawyers Guns & Money: Trump Ruins Everything. (Starts with a photo and a caption of ‘There are more people on stage performing than in the entire audience.’)
On a side note, wait, even Vanilla Ice dropped out? Last I’d heard he was one of the last of maybe two or three acts from the original list that was still there after it became obvious that this was a celebration of Trump rather than America. If even Vanilla Ice decided not to perform… wow, that’s actually kind of pathetic. (Maybe he decided that yes, there actually was such a thing as bad publicity.)
#6 Dunc
Jesus, at that rate it will take about 10 to 20 seconds for the whole spectacle, inartistic as it is, to be washed out by smoke. An assault on the ears with nothing to see but fuzzy flashing. No doubt Trump just said ‘make it yuge’ to his crony and handed over stupid amounts of taxpayer money to fund it.
Observing the fireworks from above should have been another Trump touched grift, using hot air balloon rides because it is so hot outside that the hot air would be free…
… and another opportunity missed: bringing back those great Zeppelin blimps for their killer views of the fireworks.
BTW, Zeppelin still makes airships, but filled with helium. I saw one flying over Switzerland when last I was there.
@14 Jenora Feuer: The America 250 vs Freedom 250 game was why most of the musicians quit also. The Freedom 250 group used intermediaries that mislead the musicians about who was paying. The musicians thought they were working for America 250 and a bipartisan celebration event, when word got out that it was actually a pro-Trump event they quit. This happened only a couple of weeks before the event, leaving Freedom 250 no time to recruit any replacements. At best it would have been hard to find quality musicians willing to work a pro-Trump event, with no time they had to take anybody willing.
Jenora Feuer @ # 14: … even Vanilla Ice dropped out?
His set got cancelled due to inclement weather (they shut down the whole fair even after advertising it as “rain or shine”).
As you might well imagine, the whole Internet fell prostrate with grief. /s
Ahh. So he didn’t actually drop out. That, sadly, makes more sense at this point than the way I read the quoted article.
My favourite comment on Vanilla Ice is still the fact that he showed up in the animated music video for Rod Stewart’s ‘The Motown Song’… hopping up and down like a madman and getting eye-rolls from everybody else in the alley before a truckload of ice cubes gets dumped on him. (And of all the musicians who got parodied in that video, he was the one I had to have explained to me.)
Wow, if anyone goes, they’d better be real careful, because it takes very experienced pros to control and set off the usual 20,000 explosives without killing anyone. Tens or hundreds of thousands of blasts are nothing to be incompetent about! Which we know will happen.
850,000 could have a *very* bad outcome: fireworks can even all explode on the ground before being set off, if not handled exactly correctly. That has happened even when professionals *were* in charge.
I would not be present for any reason, and I hope that no one is killed.
Two more “high”lights. You can google to find them.
1) During a rehearsal, a large chunk of the ceiling of the main stage (looks like a 3 ft x 5 ft panel) fell, closely missing the practicing dancers.
2) The “Trumphal Arch” is oozing.
Even Milli Vanilli dropped out? Then who was left to do the lip-syncing?
As always, the biggest story for me is the fact that millions of people still support -- no, worship -- this malignant narcissist. It was clear way back in the 70’s that he was a lunatic and here we are, he is still in power, he is still causing people to die and suffer. It is the psychologists to whom I look for explanations.