Trump delivers MAGA its very own Fyre Festival — the ‘Great American State Fair’

Trump delivers MAGA its very own Fyre Festival — the ‘Great American State Fair’ Holly Baxter reports on a flop of an event where you can have your fill of $23 turkey legs and dance with a crowd of four people to a Temu version of Beyonce’s greatest hits, in celebration of an America gone awry - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Say what you like about Donald Trump’s State Fair, but one thing’s for sure: it neatly summarizes everything 2026 America is all about. This is Fyre Festival meets colonialism, with a billboard that misspelled “Freedom”, a plywood arch and $23 turkey legs. Happy Fourth, y’all! Despite being billed as a marquee celebration of America's 250th birthday, photos and videos from multiple days at the fair in Washington have shown large stretches of empty pavement and lightly attended exhibits. Organizers blame timing, weather and the sheer size of the site, because in a country of 342 million, how is anyone really supposed to fill a two-mile stretch? And who the hell was supposed to know it was going to be hot in July?! Meanwhile, critics… well, critics have just been enjoying the schadenfreude. To be fair to the organizers, severe storms forced closures and postponements during opening weekend, canceling major programming and giving organizers the perfect excuse. Frozen food and ice cream melted, leaving booths closed down. There was a major power outage. Residents were told to shelter in place as rain and thunder hit. It was the kind of weather that people sometimes call “biblical” or “apocalyptic,” but those sort of descriptors might be too on-the-nose in this particular situation. The weather excuse — unfortunately for those steadfast organizers and for Fox News, the only news network that has continued to insist the fair is packed despite hundreds of photographs of semi-deserted scenes — didn't entirely explain why attendance stayed thin after the skies cleared. It also didn’t explain why the entertainment lineup had unraveled so badly in the weeks before the fair opened: even Vanilla Ice ended up dropping out after his initial set was cancelled for “inclement weather.” That one was particularly unfortunate because the former-or-perhaps-maybe-current celebrity, real name Robert Van Winkle, had just spent days promoting his appearance across media outlets and insisting that it would be “uniting”. One supposes he could’ve easily rescheduled his gig if the will was there — the schedule is hardly heaving at the seams with A-listers (or B-listers, or C-listers) — but clearly it wasn’t. Still, a band played a knockoff version of Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’ to a meandering group of five people in front of a big flag, so that’ll probably do it. For reasons unknown to anyone except RFK Jr, the state fair opened at the beginning of the week with “MAHA Monday.” How exactly it was “Make America Heaklthy Again” was unclear: there were reportedly a couple of MAHA-branded brochures and some speakers with questionable credentials (a chiropractor with interesting views about holistic health and an anti-vaccine lawyer) but little else to explain the label. Completely bizarrely, there was also a pancake-eating contest judged partly on audience applause, an unfortunate choice considering videos seemed to suggest there were only a few dozen audience members in attendance to cheer on the four people scarfing down the pancakes. “We are proud of USDA RD intern Douglas Ford for winning the Freedom 250 Pancake Eating Competition today,” tweeted the official US department for Rural Affairs in the immediate aftermath. If that’s not patriotism, then I’d like to see what is! As the president continued to insist everything was fantastic at the fair, people pointed out that a sculpture in the Texas pavilion which people had been encouraged to cover in their own handwriting had “86-47” sneaked in there (a reference to removing Trump, the 47th president, using restaurant lingo where “86” refers to removing or getting rid of an item.) By Wednesday, it became clear that anyone who might have been planning a trip to the fair in the next couple weeks would not encounter much to get excited about: a sad, singular Ferris Wheel was the only fairground ride in sight, and there was a noted absence of popular fair food such as funnel cakes and corndogs. A tent where you could hear a deserted attempt at Christian worship, though? Well, if that’s your thing, then you’re in luck! “Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?” Number 47 wrote on Truth Social, as people continued to laugh behind their hands at the Freedom 250 ghost town. “Ask yourself this simple question, ‘DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA [sic] OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO”. On Wednesday, he claimed he’d done a “packed to the brim” speech to a crowd of 45,000 people. No one could find any evidence that that was remotely true, but why do you care so much about evidence anyway, commie?! The fair limps on, beset by reports of $9 lemonades and $24 stuffed pretzels. There are two more weeks for it to get something right, but how they can go about doing that is about as clear as the algae-ridden Reflecting Pool that definitely, maybe was vandalized by anti-Trump, algae-loving miscreants and not mishandled by whoever got that no-bid contract in any way at all. I’ll have to agree with Donald J. Trump on this one: Obama (Obuma?) could never. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments