The most energetic vibe wasn’t at the Ferris wheel or the live rodeo; it was packed into an evangelical Christian tent, singing and dancing to a worship band, present despite some rather famous lines in the Constitution about church and state.

Every state is supposed to have an exhibit at the fair. But some looked more like hastily assembled trade show booths than a celebration of America’s semiquincentennial.

Kansas features a cardboard cutout of Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow, ready for visitors to pose in, although none posed when the Daily Beast saw it.

D.C.’s has a plastic cherry blossom tree, while Ohio’s pavilion plays videos of Republican governor Mike DeWine promoting a Dolly Parton library.

The most lively showcase was arguably West Virginia’s, where attendees can ride a driving simulator through a scenic route, in a nod to John Denver’s Take Me Home.

Other states simply didn’t send anything.

“The State of Oregon will not be participating in the Great American State Fair due to both the cost of participating in the Fair and growing concerns that the event in Washington D.C. is shaping up to be a more partisan affair than originally presented,” Oregon spokesperson Luke Harkins told CNN.

As a result, organizers sought to make up for their absence with lackluster results: the North Carolina booth, for example, sparked outrage after it somehow featured an altered state flag with a Confederate symbol.

The Maine pavilion featured a drab room with facts about the state and its trademark lobster on the walls. Oregon, for its part, got a wall that simply said “the beaver state” and one wooden chair.

“This one is boring!” a young boy squealed as he peeped into the room and promptly walked out.

The subdued atmosphere comes as Trump’s Freedom 250 project continues to court controversy.

The White House created the initiative after months of tensions with the congressionally chartered America250 commission, which had spent years planning the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations before Trump’s team launched its own parallel vision for the milestone.

The competing organizations have feuded over programming, branding and the direction of the anniversary, while critics have accused the administration of transforming what was intended to be a unifying national celebration into a Trump-centric production.

The temporary Triumph Arch has become one of the most visible symbols of that effort, with critics dismissing it as a taxpayer-funded vanity project planted in the middle of the National Mall.

Trump, meanwhile, kicked off the event with a rally on Thursday night, telling the crowd that the celebration marked the beginning of America’s new “Golden Age” and promised even bigger festivities when he returns on July 4.

The next day, after footage showed less-than-expected numbers and scores of people walking out during his speech, the president put out a self-soothing post declaring the opposite.

“The Crowd was incredible last night, packed to the brim — At least 45,000 people were there, with a huge Television and online audience,” the 80-year-old wrote on Truth Social.

“I wish we were able to have an even larger area, which we will be able to do on July 4th when I’ll be speaking again. The airplane flyovers and music were fantastic. Everybody stayed right until the end of my Speech because they loved hearing about a truly successful America.”

>MAGA Self-Owns by Posting Proof of Trump’s State Fair Fiasco

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-self-owns-by-posting-proof-of-donald-trumps-state-fair-fiasco/

MAGA lawmakers accidentally posted the receipts for President Donald Trump’s underwhelming Great American State Fair.

A string of Republican selfies, reels, and promotional posts from the National Mall show exactly what the White House-backed bash has been accused of becoming: a sparse, strangely empty celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

Rep. Blake Moore of Utah posted an Instagram reel from the fairgrounds, urging visitors to check out his state’s booth. But the sales pitch came with the unfortunate visual aid of Moore standing in an almost empty park, with an empty Ferris wheel turning behind him.

“Down here at the Great American State Fair—it’s gonna be open for two weeks. So if you’re here traveling in Washington, D.C. at all over the 4th, make sure to come check out the Utah booth,” Moore said.

He then seemed to all but beg people to let his office help them get there.

“Contact our office if there’s any help that you need to organize things or tours or get more information,” he added.

“Please, please reach out. We’d love to help out in that way.”

Rep. French Hill of Arkansas posted his own reel from the top of the Ferris wheel, where the view behind him showed the vast, empty National Mall grass stretching toward the Capitol.

“I hope if you have any plans to visit Washington for the 4th of July that you let us know,” Hill said from the ride.

Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas also shared a montage of himself and his wife walking around the fair, riding the Ferris wheel, inspecting an agriculture display, and visiting the Kansas state booth.

But the cheery video appeared to show mostly empty grounds as they moved through the event.

Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa posted photos of his team volunteering at Iowa’s booth, including one shot from outside the pavilion showing only a small number of people milling around.

“I hope those visiting take time to visit Iowa’s booth!” he wrote.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner of Washington tried to turn his state’s no-show into a political attack, only to pose in front of the bigger problem.

“Unfortunately Governor Bob Ferguson chose NOT to have Washington State officially participate in THE GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR, but I couldn’t let this stand, so I came down to man the nearly empty booth,” Baumgartner wrote on Twitter.

The accompanying image showed Baumgartner standing on the National Mall lawn in front of the Ferris wheel, with only a handful of people visible behind him.

He said he had come to personally stamp visitors’ “passports” after the state declined to send an official delegation.

The awkward posts came after reports that the fair had opened with melting ice cream, power problems, sparse crowds, and empty booths for several states and territories that declined to participate.

Booths for Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Alaska, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were left with little more than backdrops, chairs or carpets, according to USA Today.

The fair, organized by Freedom 250 to mark America’s 250th birthday, has been advertised as a “world-class exposition and modern-day World’s Fair.”

But on the ground, the fair has looked less like a World’s Fair than a political vanity project with attendance issues.

The National Mall event features state pavilions, executive-branch displays, a Ferris wheel, a rodeo, Trump-branded flourishes, replica Trump passports, an Abraham Lincoln hologram, and a model of the president’s proposed triumphal arch.

It was supposed to be a grand patriotic showcase. Instead, Republican lawmakers kept posting their own evidence that parts of it looked more like a fairground waiting for the crowds to arrive.

>>1521853
>Donald Trump’s “Great American State Fair”
More like "The Absolute State of Trump's American't"

Imagine being such a shitty president you fuck up a major American anniversary.

The real celebration was June 14th, you idiots.

>>1521853
Yes this looks bad but actually this is meant to make liberals seethe so mission accomplished. Trump wins again and you fell for it!

>>1521923
UFC is a bloodsport for faggots

>>1522007
Bet this was you.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/maga-influencer-arrested-masturbating-american-state-fair_n_6a4286f3e4b0f259890df90c

>>1522018
>Muh bloodsport
Yes. Thank goodness something is still real and vital in this world. I love laughing at the pussified wimps whining about combat sports while they sit around and get fat watching handegg or dribbledunk.

>>1522083
>dribbledunk
we call it Apehoop.
you would know that if you were American

>handegg
Confirmed miserable foreign faggot obsessed with the US

shilly esl seems to have more time to post now that they're stuck waiting in line for gas forever
Thank you to Donald J Trump for failing to live up to their promise to end the Ukraine conflict immediately so we could see esl shills epic meltie

>>1521853
>Trump’s Empty ‘Great State Fair’
As empty as your head, Dementia Don.

I went. It was a lot of fun and full of based Trump supporters. The whitest, most trad and based event of the decade. A taste of what America used to be when it was still great. That's why the left is seething. Trump won and threw an excellent celebration. Imagine if Kamala was president and in charge of the 250th anniversary, it would be full of blacks and lgbt propaganda while they'd throw George Washington himself in some hidden room in the back and they'd just have a plaque labeled "colonizing slave master" under him. They fucking hate America there's no way the left wouldn't fuck up a celebration of America. They hate America too much