The blond calf, named Melania, was a vocal interviewee.
Piper Stolipher, a 15-year-old student from West Virginia, raised Melania as part of a high school agricultural program.
“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,” Stolipher told me Thursday when I visited the Great American State Fair. “My teacher said they also kind of have a similar color of hair, so, I think it just fit.”
Melania was presented at the fair, which kicked off last week on parts of the National Mall, along with goats, sheep and other cows at the Agriculture Department pavilion.
Visitors to the fair wore hats and shirts with the words “MAGA” and “America Is Back.”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and perfect timing,” Manny Rochtelli, a Maryland resident who celebrated his birthday on the fair’s opening day, told me.
But not everyone shared Rochtelli’s enthusiasm, like jogger and Washingtonian Timur Loynab. He said he trains around the National Mall regularly but now has to reroute his runs because of ongoing construction and closures.
“It doesn’t feel like the same city. … It’s much more tourist-heavy, it’s much more MAGA-heavy.”
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The post A calf named Melania and other sounds from our Great American State Fair visit appeared first on Washington Post.




