Critics pounced on President Donald Trump Saturday after video emerged that appeared to show less-than-anticipated crowd sizes at the Great American State Fair.
Organized by the Trump-linked group Freedom 250, the Great American State Fair officially got underway on Thursday, but had already stumbled weeks earlier when performers pulled out en masse after learning of its ties to Trump. In the wake of the mass exodus of artists, Trump floated himself as a suitable replacement.
As of Saturday, the fair was described by The Atlantic’s Kelsey Ables as an event with “holograms, free Frosties and a lot of Donald Trump,” but its crowd sizes drew even more attention from countless political commentators.
“I've seen more people at my local diner,” noted information technology expert Carl Sizelove, who runs the popular political commentary account “Badd Company” on X, in response to video of the fair that showed a sparsely populated National Mall.
MeidasTouch reporter Aaron Parnas compared the fair to the infamous Fyre Festival, a 2017 music event that ended up as “the world’s biggest festival flop” and landed its creator behind bars. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) took the small crowds as a sign that “people aren’t very MAGA after all.”
And Kyle Kulinski, a prominent progressive political commentator and podcast host, argued that the fair’s crowd sizes represented the United States’ deterioration under Trump.
“We had a good run but clearly we didn't make it to 250,” Kulinski wrote Saturday in a social media post on X to his nearly 560,000 followers.
Fyre Festival meets DC https://t.co/v7BPK344xj
— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) June 27, 2026