Second lady Usha Vance showed up to the sparsely attended Great American State Fair to host a bookmark contest.
Speaking to a crowd of just a few dozen people, the vice president’s wife presented the winners of her “Bookmark Design Challenge to Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary.”
Children in Kindergarten through 8th Grade were invited to submit their “original, hand-drawn bookmark reflecting what America means to them,” with the winners being presented at the Great American State Fair.
“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 said as she congratulated the winners of her challenge.
The MAGA-ified Great American State Fair has seen one disaster after another as nearly every musical artist pulled out of the event, electrical outages melted all of the ice cream, and generator problems also briefly shut down the Ferris wheel.
All 50 states were supposed to be represented with a booth, but several opted out. Many displays appear to have been low-effort, with many online saying they had seen better displays at high school fairs.
Extreme heat and thunderstorms also temporarily shut down the fair on Sunday. Even the announcement of the shutdown was botched as organizers urged attendees to check for updates on the social media channels of “Freeedom 250”—misspelling the organization’s name with an extra E.
Fox News has been broadcasting live from the fair each day, with sparse crowds seen in the background.
Hosts on the conservative cable news channel have insisted there have been “thousands” of visitors on the National Mall despite visual evidence suggesting otherwise.
The event kicked off last week with a MAGA-style rally, as Trump delivered a partisan speech, and the vast majority of attendees were visible supporters of the president.
His transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, even used the word “libtard” to describe the musicians who pulled out of the Trumpy event.
Trump has self-soothed about the event’s shortcomings in a series of Truth Social posts, attempting to boast about it.
“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 raged 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!”
