For the second time in three days, inclement weather has shut down festivities at President Donald Trump’s “Great American State Fair,” putting a damper on the already embarrassing event.
“Due to inclement weather in the area, the Freedom 250 Great American State Fair and FIFA World Cup 2026™ Fan Zone will be temporarily postponed and attendees are encouraged to seek shelter,” Freedom250, the organization created by the Trump administration that is behind the event, announced on Sunday.
Organizers said they are “actively monitoring conditions” and that “the safety of our guests, staff, and partners remains our top priority.“
The event reopened just after 4 p.m. after the weather hold was lifted, the organization said in an update.
Reached for comment, Freedom250 spokesperson Rachel Reisner told the Daily Beast in a statement: “The media found time to report on a rain delay but somehow missed the real story: states as different as Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California, and New York all showed up to the same fairgrounds and set up booths along the same stretch of the National Mall. Red states, blue states, and everything in between, coming together ahead of our nation’s 250th anniversary — and somehow that’s not the story. Maybe try covering that next time instead of the weather.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Stormy weather also put the event on pause on Friday, as organizers shut down the event for the day around 5 p.m. and canceled Vanilla Ice’s scheduled performance later in the evening.
Since Trump, 80, kicked off the 16-day event with a MAGA rally on Wednesday, the American extravaganza has faced one humiliation after another.
From an embarrassingly low turnout and a questionable selection of attractions to exorbitantly high menu prices and a power outage that melted all the ice cream, the president’s state fair has really set the stage for an underwhelming celebration of America’s semiquincentennial.
The president boasted that “45,000 people” came to hear his speech on the National Mall on Wednesday, but videos from the event appeared to paint a different picture.
As seen in a video from CNN on Wednesday, the network’s Donie O’Sullivan spoke with Anderson Cooper live from the event just 20 minutes before Trump was set to speak. A large empty space was visible behind the reporter in the moments leading up to the speech.
In another humiliating blow to Trump, reporting from The Bulwark also found that attendees largely began filing out before the president was even done speaking.
Freedom250 has come under fire for its handling of the Great American State Fair amid allegations that the group diverted millions in taxpayer funds that had been earmarked for a different group established by Congress to oversee celebrations for the country’s 250th anniversary.
The Trump-founded Freedom250 group was established last year, while America250, the national bipartisan organization created by Congress, was established in 2016.
