Second lady Usha Vance attended the Great American State Fair on the National Mall to host a bookmark contest, but despite her efforts to pretend otherwise, she was greeted with the same thing the rest of the Trump administration has seen — sparse to nearly nonexistent attendance.
According to The Daily Beast, "the vice president’s wife presented the winners of her 'Bookmark Design Challenge to Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary,'" in which children from kindergarten to 8th grade showed off their “original, hand-drawn bookmark reflecting what America means to them.”
“I’m so excited to spend the summer celebrating America’s 250th anniversary through art, through books, and through outdoor fun like this with kids across the country,” she told the audience — of just "a few dozen people," according to The Beast.
The second lady's reception was par for the course, as the Great American State Fair — an event put on by President Donald Trump's partisan "Freedom 250" organization, which has crowded out funding and marketing for the Congressionally approved, bipartisan America250 celebration — has seen extremely low attendance.
The event has seen a number of embarrassments, including the refusal of several states to send delegations, electrical malfunctions that took attractions like the Ferris wheel offline for a period, and displays that are already falling apart.
Despite this, Trump and administration officials have insisted everything is a huge hit, with guests like Medicare and Medicaid administrator Dr. Oz insisting to a nearly empty audience that the crowds are great.