After Donald Trump watched fans walk out of the opening rally at his Great American State Fair on the Washington Mall, things have not gotten much better.
According to Washington Post reporting, the 16-day National Mall celebration got off to an inauspicious start Thursday, with organizers struggling to open gates on time and workers “scrambling to hide construction debris.”
The problems cascaded throughout the day. Thirty minutes after the scheduled opening, small crowds still waited outside security checkpoints as organizers battled power failures. Once admitted, fairgoers encountered a panoply of operational and electrical chaos.
According to the report, the food court promised patriotic fare but electrical issues repeatedly shut down operations, threatening to eliminate ice cream supplies on a sweltering early-summer day.
Adding to that, the centerpiece Ferris wheel offering free rides with views of the mall, operated only “intermittently due to a faulty generator,” with workers acknowledging the ride’s unreliability as frustrated fairgoers waited in line.
“This whole production has been running behind,” one water station vendor told the Post before pointing out the water “…was room temperature, just so you know. There’s no ice yet.”
Fair goers were able to see a calf named “Melania” — shipped in from West Virginia — with the owner, Piper Stolipher, 15, explaining to the Post, “We were trying to come up with patriotic names for the 250th year, and we came up with Melania, which is President Trump’s wife and my teacher thought that they had a similar hair color, so it just fit.”
Frustratingly for some attendees, eight states, mostly led by Democratic governors, refused to participate, citing prohibitive exhibition costs, with the Post reporting, “Pavilions without representation from their own state were left with a stock format: Two low-slung chairs, a composition of images representing the state and maybe a fake plant. Visitors took to sheltering in these less-occupied stations for a shaded lunch.”
“Not much to see here,” one visitor commented while departing the Connecticut pavilion.
In another damning indictment of the entire enterprise, the Post reported, “Just after 9 p.m., there was a hopeful sign. The Ferris wheel came back to life, instantly throwing light onto the darkening fair grounds and eliciting scattered cheers from the crowd. A snaking line quickly formed in spite of the late hour. People had been waiting a long time to catch the view.”
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