The “Great America State Fair” has turned out to be another bust in the series of cringeworthy Donald Trump public events associated with America’s 250th birthday. “Amid the sprawling stretches of open space, there is a 110-foot Freedom 250 Ferris wheel and a tacky plywood ‘Triumph Arch’ dominating the center of the grounds, a replica of the monument Trump wants to build near D.C.’s sacred Arlington Cemetery,” the Daily Beast reported. “There are no corn dogs or funnel cakes. No roller coasters or merry-go-rounds. And by Friday morning, Pennsylvania became the latest of several Democratic states to declare it was not taking part.” Sad! Or, as others described it, “pathetic, “pitiful,” and “smaller than some outdoor movie screenings.”
As with any Trumpian production featuring pretensions of grandeur, this has become another ode to his incompetence and cultural cluelessness. There is something particularly feeble about the MAGA cult leader — who has long insisted he understands “real” America in a way the left supposedly is incapable of doing — seeming in over his head when it comes to an event a midsize town’s Rotary Club could have staged (and done it better).
The less-than-great fair may not make the list of infamous mass events that went disastrously wrong (in part because overcrowding would be the least of its concerns), but Trump’s latest pratfall is nevertheless remarkable. It is baffling that the Trump gang cannot pull together mundane public functions, even with years of advance notice (for which plans could have been pulled from the Bicentennial celebration files). They did have access to massive public resources and institutional knowledge over a range of federal agencies. How many more examples do we need to prove the folly of know-nothing billionaires with contempt for government being placed in charge of public functions?
Unfortunately, we have been privy to an abundance of humiliating public spectacles (e.g., the Kennedy Center defacement, the cancel-plagued concert, the sleazy UFC extravaganza, the algae sludge debacle). They follow a familiar script, punctuated by Trumpian grandiosity, contempt for expertise, attachment to money-grabbing grift, refusal to listen to critics or bad news, dismal personal taste, and jaw-dropping ignorance of logistics. We can all now appreciate how he managed to bankrupt casinos.
Like a refrigerator stuffed with weirdly-colored, past-expiration-date leftovers, Trump events should come with trigger warnings for the squeamish. His discolored palate-preference (see: repulsive orange bronzer, slathered brown hand cream, hazmat-green reflecting pool) seems a far-too apt metaphor for a rotting, fetid presidency.
Given the meager showing at the fair and its shoddy visuals, Trump’s declaration last week that the event was emblematic of the “Golden Age of America” seemed particularly ludicrous. (Whenever I hear “Golden Age,” I cannot help but think of “Golden Girls” or the “Golden Era of Vaudeville” — entertainment of a different era with meager cultural relevance or appeal.)
As Trump’s political and personal decline accelerates, even his go-to move for public pageantry — disgusting pseudo-Versailles excess — cannot save the day. “Trompe l’oeil sheets cover slapdash structures lining both sides of the Mall with an illustration of architecture that is supposed to be beaux arts but is so stripped down that it makes the nearby brutalist buildings look practically baroque,” Kesley Ables observed.
“A boxy model of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch in the center of the Mall appears as if it could have been designed in Minecraft and ordered from CVS for same-day pickup.”
Trump’s public aesthetic (if we dare call it that) now falls into two categories. The more familiar is characterized by his gold-flocking fetish, which did not start with the Oval Office but has now exploded onto every surface of it. As his pathological narcissism has worsened, there is no hope to satiate his hunger for self-glorification and no one around to protect him from his own comically bad taste, as Slate’s Christina Cauterucci put it:
Fran Lebowitz had Trump’s number when she called him “a poor person’s idea of a rich person”; Dolly Parton got it right when she pointed out the high cost of looking cheap. Gold is garish, obvious, a rejection of respectability—the decor equivalent of Mar-a-Lago face. An overreliance on precious metals in the flaunting of one’s wealth can give the impression of protesting too much. It reveals not just an absence of original taste but deep insecurity: Trump is soothed by his gold surroundings, which remind him that his assets will protect him from the worst this cruel world has to offer.
The second category of Trump imagery now encompasses his lame attempts to imitate and reflect what he thinks represents Middle America’s taste. But of course, no one is less in tune with actual pop culture than the eighty-year-old billionaire who rarely ventures outside his own golf properties.
It shouldn’t have been hard during the 250th celebration activities to offer a sampling of popular culture that would have entertained millions of Americans. It’s not as if their musical, fashion, food, media, and recreational preferences are a state secret. But MAGA ideologues feel compelled to reject and demonize authentic pop culture trends and insult leading icons (from Taylor Swift to Bad Bunny to Bruce Springsteen), whom they paint as pawns of woke liberalism. They are left with Kid Rock in their own cultural wasteland, wandering around empty fairgrounds. You have to credit the candor of those at the Great America State Fair who pronounced the whole thing “shockingly boring.”
That’s the choice we now get from a presidential era that is neither “great” nor “golden”: stomach-turning orgies of bad taste and violence OR faded, crotchety displays that resemble scenes from Disney’s Carousel of Progress.
It turns out that as bad a president as he is, he is an even worse impresario of popular culture and public spectacle. It’s quite a fall for the man whose entire public image was built on reality TV.
That picture shows it all.
Why aren't MAGAts streaming in from all over (or least nearby) to celebrate their cult leader and flatter him with their loyal presence?
Could it be that they can't afford the gas in their pickup trucks to travel that far?
Or could it (please) be that they are no longer interested in participating in his reality show theatrics and are secretly hoping he soon gets fired?
Fran Lebowitz had Trump’s number when she called him “a poor person’s idea of a rich person”;
That's a perfect summary of Don the Con's taste! He couldn't be more nouveau if he was cast in a remake of The Beverly Hillbillies
It's even better than the quote from someone I can't recall, who described him as:
A short-fingered vulgarian