Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair was supposed to be a victory lap. Instead, it turned into a case study in what happens when almost no one wants to perform for you and the backup plan involves claiming you’re bigger than Elvis.
By Friday, six musical acts had canceled: Martina McBride, Young MC, Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Morris Day & the Time, and Bret Michaels. That left Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice, and a featured guest from C+C Music Factory holding down what was supposed to be a multi-day celebration of American greatness.
On Saturday, Trump took to Truth Social with a solution that sounded less like event planning and more like damage control.
The replacement plan that isn’t a plan
Trump wrote that the fair should be scrapped in favor of “a giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250,” replacing the “overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain.”
He added that he would “happily step in as the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar.”
It’s unclear how one rally replaces several days of scheduled concerts. It’s also unclear what “for 250” means, though it may refer to ticket price, capacity, or the number of people Trump believes will show up.
Trump also announced he had canceled his involvement with the Kennedy Center, calling it “failing and unsafe to be in,” before launching into a complaint about a federal judge who ordered his name removed from the venue’s facade.
The artists got the yips, apparently
In a separate post, Trump suggested the departing musicians were suffering from “the yips,” a term typically reserved for athletes who lose the ability to perform under pressure. The implication: these seasoned performers were too nervous to share a bill with the sitting president.
The remaining acts have not publicly commented on whether stage fright was involved.
Trump’s Saturday posts were part of what The New Republic described as another Truth Social bender, complete with AI-generated images and self-congratulatory declarations. The flurry arrived during a particularly difficult news cycle for the administration, including stalled negotiations with Iran and continued fallout from the war in the Middle East.
What comes next
The fate of the Great American State Fair remains unresolved. Trump has floated canceling it entirely in favor of a single rally. He has also suggested that he alone could fill the void left by half a dozen professional entertainers.
There’s no indication that planning for the proposed rally has begun, or that Trump has consulted the party planners responsible for his botched military parade.
What’s clear is that the event Trump envisioned as a show of cultural force has become another story about who will and will not show up when he asks.
The question now: whether Trump will follow through on the rally threat, or whether the fair will limp forward with Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida, and one-third of C+C Music Factory doing their best to fill several days of programming designed for a much larger roster.
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