Trump's Great American State Fair is a fabulous flop | Opinion

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.

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.

In a social media post on June 29, Trump ‒ who is definitely not mad ‒ wrote: “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 OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO!”

Oh, man, somebody inject that tragic self-pity straight into my veins.

Trump made America's 250th all about himself, so failure was inevitable

Do I think “OBUMA” (which I assume is pronounced Oh-Boom-Ah) or “SLEEPY JOE BIDEN” could’ve turned the National Mall into a laughingstock with an occasionally working Ferris wheel and $23 turkey legs? An event “packed with happy people” who are apparently invisible, or maybe are ghost or ninjas? 

No, I don’t think those two other presidents ‒ or any other past president ‒ could’ve pulled off such a feat. Because I don’t think any previous leader would have made the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration all about himself, or been foolish enough to promote his self-centered celebration as the greatest event in history, setting the stage for inevitable failure.

Up until Trump, our presidents have not been full-blown narcissists who ruin everything they touch. They haven’t divided the country so sharply, or so wholly ignored their own unpopularity and proceeded as if they’re God’s gift to America.

I love this country, but I also love watching Trump's fair flailing

To be clear, my reveling in Trump’s Great American State Fair failure has nothing to do with my feelings about our country on this momentous anniversary.

I’m a big fan of America, and of the freedom it has given me to share my opinions. In fact, it’s that love for America that makes me feel good about President Trump feeling bad.

He has spent outlandish amounts of our money “beautifying” Washington, DC, with projects nobody asked for, from his absurd White House ballroom to his cartoonishly messy and algae-coated refurbishing of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. And he is doing these things not for us, but for himself, driven by a desire to attach his name to all things relating to America’s 250th anniversary.

Trump will be the featured speaker at the July 4 celebration. Trump was the featured speaker to launch the Great American State Fair. Trump is the one boasting constantly about these celebrations and promoting all the things HE is doing to make the celebrations “fantastic."

But as with all things Trump, nothing is fantastic. It’s all a shoddy ruse aimed at lining his or some friend’s pockets.

His rally to launch the fair was poorly attended. The subpar musical acts initially announced as performers quickly backed out. The fair itself seems half-baked and has been marred by logistical problems. 

Americans were born to stand up to bullies. Trump gets to learn that now.

So yes, I am celebrating the ignominy Trump is facing. He is a bully and a blowhard who has shown more concern for his egocentric celebrations than he has for the American people celebrating the Fourth of July under the crushing weight of high fuel prices and expensive food.

America was bullied, via taxation and military occupation, by Great Britain. So we declared, and fought for, our independence. Laughing at bullies is kind of in our national DNA. It's part of what we're celebrating 250 years later.

You can love America and also delight in watching Trump’s vain vision of America’s 250th celebration fizzle like a sparkler in a sprinkler. I’d argue the quiet satisfaction of watching nobody show up to a bully’s party is an emotion as American as both apple pie and real state fairs.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.