There are events that underperform their press releases and there are events that get compared to the Fyre Festival by a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who went to check on Georgia’s pavilion and found empty food lines at a state fair where, as she noted, you would expect people to be “flocking to get water or something to drink” even in the heat if anyone were there.
Tia Mitchell, the AJC’s Washington bureau chief, appeared on CNN News Central and described her experience visiting the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, per Raw Story. “I went out there this week to check out Georgia’s tent, check out the vibes,” she said. “You’re right, there weren’t a lot of people there. I think a signature kind of indicator of a state fair is the food lines, and they were empty, and, I mean, think about any outdoor event. Even in this heat, the food line is always packed. If nothing else, you would think people were flocking to get water or something to drink.” The food lines were empty. In summer heat. At a state fair.
The fair’s opening night attendance was claimed by Trump at 45,000. Independent estimates from NBC News and The Washington Post put the figure closer to 1,000, which is a discrepancy of approximately 44,000 people and which the White House has not revised. The fair is sponsored by Freedom 250, an organization the administration stood up in competition with the bipartisan congressionally mandated America250 organization, meaning there are two separate organizations running America’s 250th birthday simultaneously, one with congressional authorization and one with the president’s, and the one with the president’s has empty food lines.
Six states declined to participate in pavilion programming: Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, and one additional blue state. Their absence means roughly a fifth of the United States is not represented at the national birthday celebration, which is either a partisan problem or a geometry problem depending on how you arrange the tents.
The Fyre Festival promised luxury accommodations and delivered disaster relief tents and cheese sandwiches. The Great American State Fair promised 45,000 attendees and delivered empty food lines in July heat. Both involved ambitious promotional materials.
When the national birthday party has empty food lines in summer and the attendance numbers require a 44,000-person revision, what exactly is being celebrated?
Sources
Raw Story: Great American State Fair compared to Fyre Festival
Raw Story: Trump dragged over low turnout to Great State Fair: ‘Seen more people at my local diner’
