{"id":1057831,"date":"2026-06-29T16:24:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1057831\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T16:24:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:24:24","slug":"trump-bends-truth-to-his-will-over-ghost-town-great-american-state-fair-in-morning-rant-what-a-fantastic-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1057831\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump bends Truth to his will over ghost town \u2018Great American State Fair\u2019 in morning rant: \u2018What a fantastic job\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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President Trump<\/a>\u2019s politically charged semiquincentennial celebration on the National Mall<\/a> has suffered a seemingly endless supply of indignities<\/a> \u2014 from melted ice cream<\/a> to nobody showing up \u2014 in less than a week,<\/a> but Trump wants Americans to believe everything is fine.<\/p>\n

Trump took to Truth Social<\/a> early on Monday morning to pose a rhetorical question to his followers there, writing: \u201cDo you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did<\/a> in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk yourself this simple question, \u2018DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA [sic] OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?\u2019 THE ANSWER IS NO,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether enough Americans have visited the event to conduct a statistically accurate survey on whether they believe Trump has done a \u201cfantastic job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the two-week event kicked off<\/a> on Wednesday, it has been beset by a string of embarrassing mishaps<\/a>, starting with a lackluster crowd at the president\u2019s appearance to launch the entire project. <\/p>\n

\"PortraitsPortraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are displayed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) exhibit on the fourth day of the “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall (Getty)<\/p>\n

Even before it had gotten started, the Trump-aligned Freedom250 organization had problems drumming up interest from exhibitors and performers. Multiple musicians cancelled appearances after it was announced that they\u2019d be performing, with some stating that they\u2019d been misled into believing the event was part of America250 \u2014 the nonpartisan, official organization that has been sidelined by Trump in favor of his MAGA-aligned Freedom250 group.<\/p>\n

Virtually every artist who was scheduled to perform for at the concert series \u2014 including Martini McBride, The Commodores and Bret Michaels \u2014 dropped out of Freedom 250\u2019s lineup <\/a>shortly after it was announced. That is, except for \u201890s rapper Vanilla Ice<\/a>, who kept the booking.<\/p>\n

But then, even the \u201cIce, Ice, Baby\u201d one-hit-wonder failed to perform as Freedom 250, the president\u2019s public-private organization tasked with throwing celebrations for the 250th anniversary of American independence, announced after 5 p.m. ET Friday that \u201cdue to inclement weather\u201d the \u201cGreat American State Fair,\u201d where Vanilla Ice was set to perform, will be closed for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n

Multiple Democratic-led states also pulled out of staffing booths at the event, citing the way it had been billed as including MAGA-aligned messaging instead of the more generally patriotic theme that had been promised. <\/p>\n

When Trump spoke at the political rally-style kickoff last week, he claimed America was \u201cback\u201d and \u201crespected by everybody\u201d simply by virtue of him being the sitting president.<\/p>\n

\"EvenEven \u201cIce, Ice, Baby\u201d one-hit-wonder Vanilla Ice failed to perform as Freedom 250 pulled the plug on his set (Getty)\"AA small-scale replica of Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall “Independence Arch” is on display at the Great American State Fair (Getty)<\/p>\n

The 80-year-old president later claimed that his speech was \u201cpacked to the brim<\/a>\u201d with 45,000 attendees, though video of the event undermined that claim.<\/p>\n

The next morning, power failed in the facility that had been constructed to host a food hall, leading ice cream to melt in the summer Washington heat.<\/p>\n

Photos circulating throughout the weekend appear to show large stretches of the fairgrounds sitting mostly empty. In one of the most striking images, captured Saturday by The Associated Press, musician Jason Hershey is seen performing at the David\u2019s Tent Christian worship space in front of rows of empty seats, with seemingly only two people in attendance. <\/p>\n

Another image shows just a small group of visitors inside a large tent examining an automotive exhibit.<\/p>\n

NBC News reported last week that the event attendance numbers were \u201cnowhere near\u201d the figures Trump had cited, with many attendees on Wednesday appearing to have come only to see the president speak.<\/p>\n

Separately, the Washington Post reported that the crowd at Wednesday\u2019s event \u201cthinly covered an area about the length of the National Museum of American History, smaller than some summer outdoor movie screenings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erin Keller contributed additional reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1057832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[290475,157021,162349,557,4080,267487,67046,290473,104592,12,17742,457,2249,48834,104596,290474,659,276154,17246,26],"class_list":["post-1057831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-abc-broadcasting-company","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-attending","tag-california","tag-celebrities","tag-city-of-los-angeles","tag-dancing-with-the-stars","tag-finishing","tag-full-length","tag-news","tag-one-person","tag-people","tag-photography","tag-rapper","tag-smiling","tag-the-grove-los-angeles","tag-usa","tag-vanilla-ice","tag-vertical","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116834328456465912","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1057832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}