Trump says great state fair ‘packed to the brim’ despite almost no one showing up
Donald Trump’s ‘Great American State Fair’ has been labelled a ghost town as pictures showed how few people turned up.
The US president is throwing a 16-day bash on the National Mall in Washington DC to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
But the event has been beset with issues, from sparse crowds to power outages.
One picture from Saturday showed rows of empty chairs and just two people watching a performance by musician Jason Hershey.
The fair is billed as a patriotic showcase filled with family attractions, live entertainment and exhibits to mark the country’s 250th birthday.
The fair doesn’t feature any roller coasters or carnival rides – just a 110-foot Ferris wheel and a plywood ‘Triumph Arch’.
It was meant to kick off on Wednesday with a concert, but a string of musicians dropped out due to security concerns and divisiveness.
So Trump became the headliner and delivered a ‘rally to end all rallies’ alongside bands from the Marine Corps and the Army.
He claimed on Truth Social that the crowd was ‘packed to the brim’ with 45,000 attendees.
However, photographs taken at the event tell a different story, with NBC News saying attendance was ‘nowhere near’ that figure.
The Washington Post wrote earlier this week that the crowd ‘thinly covered an area about the length of the National Museum of American History, smaller than some summer outdoor movie screenings’.
It appears turnout has not improved much since then.
Images taken across the weekend appear to show vast areas of the fairground largely empty.
Each state has their own booth – but Maine didn’t send a delegation, so their dedicated area is just an empty room with some chairs, Boston Globe reporter Sam Brodey tweeted.
Attendance has not been the only challenge so far.
Power outages impacted some of the fair’s offerings, resulting in melted ice cream and disruption to the 110-foot-tall Ferris wheel.
Organisers Freedom 250 acknowledged there had been some ‘power hiccups’.
What has generated some much-needed buzz is a cow named Melania, after the president’s wife, Melania Trump.
Student Piper Stolipher showcased the animal on Friday, saying its colours matched the first lady’s hair.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
from Metro https://ift.tt/92BIbgi
No comments