Former Superman actor Dean Cain’s attempt to sell Donald Trump’s state fair as a smash hit unraveled in real time as he appeared with Dr. Mehmet Oz at the National Mall.
Cain and Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, touted the Great American State Fair’s supposed mass appeal during an onstage conversation at the fairgrounds on Monday.
“There are tons of people here, it’s a huge space, and it’s just going to get more and more crowded as the week goes on,” Cain said in a video posted by TMZ.
The video, however, immediately undercut Cain’s claim as the camera panned over to the audience, exposing a far thinner turnout than he had suggested.
Just a few dozen people stood near the stage in scattered clusters to hear the conversation between Oz, a high-ranking Trump administration official, and Cain, the MAGA actor who joined ICE last year.
Beyond that, the lawn of the National Mall leading towards the stage sat almost entirely empty.
Still, Oz, 66, joined Cain, 59, in insisting that the event, put on by the Trump-created Freedom 250 organization, was packed and buzzing.
“Not only do we have a lot of people here that you want to have, like Stacy Garrity, that woman will be the next governor of Pennsylvania,” the failed Pennsylvania Senate candidate said.
TMZ’s Charlie Cotton later spoke with Cain directly about the negative attention sparked by the bird’s-eye photo of the sparsely attended fair that he posted on Saturday.
“Everybody was like, oh, there’s nobody there; there’s tons of people around here. And it’s going to get more and more crowded,” Cain said. “But that’s divisive. I was trying to be, you know, unifying towards people. Look how great this is in our nation’s Capitol.”
Trump and his devotees have sought to portray the state fair as a resounding success, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Power cuts on the first day knocked out the food hall, melting ice cream, and generator problems briefly shut down the Ferris wheel. Extreme heat and rain forced organizers to temporarily close the fair on Sunday afternoon.
The 80-year-old president immediately launched into an angry rant about the fair after waking up on Monday morning.
“Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?” he wrote on Truth Social at 6:27 a.m. “Ask yourself this simple question, ‘DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO!”
