🎡"Great American State Fair” Edition

Jun 30, 2026

Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair was supposed to be a patriotic extravaganza celebrating America’s 250th birthday. Instead, it became a celebration of one of Trump’s oldest political traditions: arguing with reality.

The event promised a modern-day World’s Fair, complete with state pavilions, concerts, exhibits, a Ferris wheel, and enough saccharin Americana to make Norman Rockwell develop diabetes. What visitors found instead were sparse crowds, canceled performers, power outages, melted ice cream, technical glitches, and enough empty pavement to land the president’s grifted Qatari Air Force One.

Trump, naturally, declared victory.

He insisted opening night drew 45,000 people and described the grounds as “packed to the brim,” despite photographs and video showing large open spaces and reporters describing attendance as relatively sparse.

This has become one of the defining features of Trumpism: if reality disagrees with the press release, reality must be fake news.

Even Fox News accidentally wandered into the comedy by broadcasting live interviews with administration officials while vast stretches of empty fairgrounds filled the background.

The fair’s problems didn’t stop there. Major performers withdrew after concluding the event had become overtly political. Several states declined to participate. A power failure shut down attractions and spoiled food. Even one of the event’s listed restaurants publicly announced it had never agreed to participate in the first place.

But perhaps the most revealing aspect wasn’t the attendance. It was the concept. America’s 250th birthday should be about the country. Instead, it once again became about the president. Some presidents leave behind libraries. Others leave behind monuments. Donald Trump may be remembered as the first president to throw himself a birthday party so unpopular that even the empty chairs looked like they had somewhere else to be.