Since opening last week, President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C. has struggled with almost everything — middling crowd sizes, empty booths, rain delays, musicians dropping out, states boycotting, feuding event planners.
But Fox News insists the event is going swimmingly.
“It’s really something,” correspondent Peter Doocy said Sunday during an interview with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins overlooking the rain-soaked grounds, where only a handful of attendees could be seen across the vast event pavilion. “The weather, not the best today, but people are still coming out.”
The network has gone so far as to suggest viewers’ eyes are deceiving them when video of the event has showed mostly empty fields between booths on the National Mall.
“Sometimes the pictures really don’t tell the full story because if you look behind us, you see, OK, there are a couple hundred people back there,” reporter Kevin Corke said in one segment. “But the truth is, when you make your way over here … you’re in a wash of people.”
The network has been following the event closely. Programs are filmed on site from a towering broadcast booth above the fair, where correspondents frequently report from the scene throughout each day. Panelists have covered the fair’s daily entertainment, heaping praise on a rodeo event and chainsaw demonstrations, while questioning whether carnival food like hot dogs and mini pizzas fit with the president’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Host Sandra Smith insisted during a Monday afternoon broadcast that there was a “lotta energy” on the fairgrounds, as a live shot again showed a mostly empty scene, including one in front of a replica of the president’s planned victory arch monument in Washington.
Later Monday, as the desolate scene appeared to continue, reporter Lucas Tomlinson suggested that the afternoon close of financial markets would mean some more attendees heading the fair’s way.
The Independent has requested comment from Fox News.
On social media, a similarly jarring side-by-side played out. A clip of the day’s festivities went viral, but not for positive reasons.
Onstage, as actor Dean Cain and Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spoke of the “tons” of people in attendance, a TMZ camera swiveled to show a crowd of about 20 people watching the talk, as a smattering of fairgoers could be seen in the far distance near a Ferris wheel.
“Shoddy displays and tiny crowds,” Trump critic and former CNN anchor Jim Acosta wrote on X of his visit to the event. “But lots of Trump worship. Sad.”
The Independent has sought comment from the White House and Freedom 250, the White House-backed, public-private group organizing the fair in conjunction with other events celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The president and his allies have continued to insist the event is a smash hit while brushing off questions about crowd size.
In an early Monday post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that the fair was “packed with happy people,” echoing his similarly unsupported claims that his Wednesday kickoff speech drew a crowd of “at least 45,000 people.”
Cain, the actor, wrote in a Sunday post on X that “haters” reacting negatively to his picture showing a mostly empty view of the National Mall from the Ferris wheel were “anti-American” people who should “seek help.”
The seemingly low turnout could be due to a number of factors, ranging from Washington’s alternatively hot and humid summer weather to the president’s dismal approval rating.
During his first term, the president and his officials famously continued to insist they had a historically large inauguration crowd, despite photos clearly showing other presidents drew far larger audiences.
