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 X.
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.
