WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0An upcoming celebration of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary, \u201cThe Great American State Fair,\u201d recently had several musical guests back out, partly over the event\u2019s ties to President Trump. Now, Trump himself is slated to headline the festivities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand Artists are getting \u2018the yips\u2019 having to do with their performance,\u201d Trump posted on his social media platform Saturday. With a boastful and derisive flourish, he adding that he was thinking of bringing \u201cthe man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate \u2018Artists.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The group organizing the June fair on Washington\u2019s National Mall, Freedom 250, confirmed the billing in a statement Saturday, writing, \u201cWe are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for Freedom 250, said the fair that is officially scheduled from June 25 through July 10 will feature exhibits, family friendly attractions, flyovers and musical performances \u2014 by those still remaining on the program. <\/p>\n
Trump was dismissive of the acts that backed out, insulting them and suggesting in a follow-up post that the solution is to \u201cCancel it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should have a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
Freedom 250 is billed as nonpartisan, but it was launched last year by Trump and is led by a former State Department appointee from the president\u2019s first term. Several artists, including Bret Michaels, the Commodores and Martina McBride dropped out last week.<\/p>\n
Michaels and other artists have said that they were misled about the theme of the shows or were otherwise wary of being caught up in a political fight. McBride, in a statement on Instagram, said she had been \u201cpresented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other artists plan to attend, including Flo Rida, Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli and Vanilla Ice. The latter\u2019s representative previously said that the \u201cIce Ice Baby\u201d rapper was \u201cproud to help celebrate America\u2019s 250th Anniversary!\u201d<\/p>\n
Bedayn and Binkley write for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0An upcoming celebration of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary, \u201cThe Great American State Fair,\u201d recently had several musical guests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[50727,1028,50203,12,50731,37038,50729,50728,50405,50495,34405,13811,50730,74,739,3030],"class_list":["post-94447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-donald-trump","tag-250th-anniversary-event","tag-artist","tag-bret-michaels","tag-donald-trump","tag-family-friendly-attraction","tag-freedom","tag-great-president","tag-june-fair","tag-martina-mcbride","tag-milli-vanilli","tag-national-mall","tag-performance","tag-statement-saturday","tag-trump","tag-washington","tag-wednesday"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116670703496273364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}