Trump's Great American State Fair is a fabulous flop Opinion [View all]

In the heat wave that has consumed most of America, I am cooled by the country’s frosty reception of the fair, and shamelessly drunk on schadenfreude.

I love President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. I love its emptiness. Its expensive food. Its ability to confound Trump-friendly media outlets that keep pretending it’s going great.

This spectacle on the National Mall in Washington, DC, part of Trump’s Trump-centric celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, is like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock.

And I love it so much it hurts.

Trump's Great American State Fair humiliation is soothing America

I love seeing Fox News broadcasting from the fair, its hosts claiming the place is filled with excited patriots while the scenes behind them show a vast expanse of untrod-upon grass with an occasional few humans milling along the fringes.

An aerial view of the National Mall on the first day of the Great American State Fair on June 25th, 2026, in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/06/30/great-american-state-fair-trump-attendance/90741971007/