As the multi-day festival organized in part by President Donald Trump designed to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary continues to fall apart, former presidential speechwriter David Frum flagged on Sunday what he believed was behind the event’s ever-increasing list of problems.
Dubbed the Great American State Fair, the event was organized by the Trump-linked organization Freedom 250, with Trump himself being "actively involved” in the process. A live music concert was initially planned for the event but may be cancelled after “nearly all” performers backed out after learning of the event’s connections to Trump.
“You might have thought that presiding over such a celebration would be an easy success for Trump. He is a showman after all,” Frum wrote in an analysis published Sunday in The Atlantic.
“He loves parades and extravaganzas. It was all an easy layup, a gimme, a chance for a now-unpopular second-term president to reinvent himself as the leader of all of the American people.”
The Trump administration scrambled in the wake of performers bailing on the event en masse, with Trump later proposing to replace the artists with himself, and at an event to be held at the “same time” and “same location” as the fair, except with “only great patriots invited.”
And, as the chaos continues to unfold, Frum believes he knows exactly why the event has appeared to crumble.
“The only thing he had to do was – for once in his life – not act like an insane egomaniac," Frum wrote. “He couldn’t do it.”
Frum argued that the event’s failure was all but admitted to by Trump, citing a social media post the president published on Saturday evening, which Frum described as an “indictment of his own program.”
“Cancel it,” Trump wrote, referring to the Great American State Fair.
Frum continued, “Trump knows he has botched the anniversary. He says so himself.”