President Trump’s politically charged semiquincentennial celebration on the National Mall has suffered a seemingly endless supply of indignities — from melted ice cream to nobody showing up — in less than a week, but Trump wants Americans to believe everything is fine.
Trump took to Truth Social early on Monday morning to pose a rhetorical question to his followers there, writing: “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?”
“Ask yourself this simple question, ‘DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA [sic] OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO,” he added.
It’s unclear whether enough Americans have visited the event to conduct a statistically accurate survey on whether they believe Trump has done a “fantastic job.”
Since the two-week event kicked off on Wednesday, it has been beset by a string of embarrassing mishaps, starting with a lackluster crowd at the president’s appearance to launch the entire project.
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’d be performing, with some stating that they’d been misled into believing the event was part of America250 — the nonpartisan, official organization that has been sidelined by Trump in favor of his MAGA-aligned Freedom250 group.
Virtually every artist who was scheduled to perform for at the concert series — including Martini McBride, The Commodores and Bret Michaels — dropped out of Freedom 250’s lineup shortly after it was announced. That is, except for ‘90s rapper Vanilla Ice, who kept the booking.
But then, even the “Ice, Ice, Baby” one-hit-wonder failed to perform as Freedom 250, the president’s public-private organization tasked with throwing celebrations for the 250th anniversary of American independence, announced after 5 p.m. ET Friday that “due to inclement weather” the “Great American State Fair,” where Vanilla Ice was set to perform, will be closed for the rest of the day.
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.
When Trump spoke at the political rally-style kickoff last week, he claimed America was “back” and “respected by everybody” simply by virtue of him being the sitting president.
The 80-year-old president later claimed that his speech was “packed to the brim” with 45,000 attendees, though video of the event undermined that claim.
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.
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’s Tent Christian worship space in front of rows of empty seats, with seemingly only two people in attendance.
Another image shows just a small group of visitors inside a large tent examining an automotive exhibit.
NBC News reported last week that the event attendance numbers were “nowhere near” the figures Trump had cited, with many attendees on Wednesday appearing to have come only to see the president speak.
Separately, the Washington Post reported that the crowd at Wednesday’s event “thinly covered an area about the length of the National Museum of American History, smaller than some summer outdoor movie screenings.”
Erin Keller contributed additional reporting
