WASHINGTON, DC – As I entered the Great American State Fair on Monday, I saw a red-faced older gentleman, looking upset. “I’m mad at Trump!” he exclaimed, adding the event didn’t resemble any fair he had been to before.
I stopped him and identified myself as a journalist. He and his wife brushed me off, saying he didn’t want to talk to the media.
He was far from alone in having that reaction to the Great American State Fair, which is taking up the National Mall with a tiny model of Trump’s triumphal arch, broken air conditioning, sagging tarps, and more for the next few weeks. Many of those at the fair seemed to be a mix of confused and underwhelmed by the whole thing. In other ways, it was like a microcosm of the modern conservative movement’s vision of America: lots of God, a warped view of the country’s values, much of it a scam.
I went last Saturday with a friend of mine. He’s a former journalist, but made the wise financial move of declining to turn this into a lifelong career. He follows politics and current events. But not super closely, and definitely not in the kind of detail that we offer at TPM.
After arriving, we decided to stop by a Freedom Truck. They had sample curricula outside; for High School, the first question was: “What were the Western and Judeo-Christian traditions inherited by the American colonists?”
As if to provide one possible answer, a middle-aged woman in front of us in line started to make conversation. A rodeo that the fair hosts had a competition that morning featuring a nationally ranked Black cowboy from Maryland, she said. The man had been on Fox News that morning, she added, before expressing bewilderment: how could it be that a Black man from Maryland competed in rodeos?
After the Freedom Truck, we spotted, visited, and avoided a Budweiser Truck ($12 Michelob, no thank you), and then moved on to a tent with a religious theme. A “Great Awakening” booth had books and DVDs on the essential fakeness of the COVID pandemic, the country’s Christian founding, and more. My friend and I stopped to speak with an attendant at the stall; she immediately began to try to convert us. She asked if we really knew what would happen once we died; I replied that I didn’t think anyone knew the answer to that question. Her eyes now burning, she told us that she knew, asked our names, and started to pray for us. Once she asked if we could repeat after her that Jesus Christ was our lord and savior, we walked away.
The whole thing veered from strangely funny to unsettling to deadening. Another booth was for AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens. It’s the conservative AARP; among other things, they support raising the minimum eligibility age for Social Security. At the fair, they were giving out red grip pads with “THE LEFT NEEDS TO GET A GRIP” emblazoned on the front.
Outside of the big tents are rows of smaller ones that line the edges of the fair. One activity involves taking a mini-passport and going to the booth for each of the states and territories represented at the fair. Connecticut Public Media reported that Freedom 250 was demanding that the states fund and staff the exhibits.
Because several states declined to participate, the result was bizarre. The booths for Vermont and Hawaii were decorated with two chairs, a stamp, and a backdrop that has the name of the state. New Jersey declined to send a delegation. Instead, an organizer told me, Freedom250 reached out to conservative Cape May county. That is how Cape May came to represent the entire state of New Jersey at the fair.
Many of the states seemed confused about the assignment, and appear to have sent a trade delegation to the fair. These are the kinds of people meant to showcase a state or territory for foreign investment: Puerto Rico, for example, came with products made on the island, and a display boasting that it “combines full U.S. market access, a competitive cost structure, skilled bilingual talent, and established global industry presence.” Idaho boasted its tech sector; South Carolina its golf courses.
We went into another booth that exhibited the work of an artist who made stylized images of American cities and monuments. It wasn’t immediately obvious, but he also seemed to be a Christian nationalist. In the style of a pre-printing press illuminated manuscript, he included a fabricated quote from George Washington: “Do not let anyone claim tribute of american patriotism if they even attempt to remove religion from politics,” it read.
Federal departments had booths, as well. The Justice Department’s was entirely devoted to the Bureau of Prisons, with at least three recruitment tables to become prison guards. The Department of State had giant mockups of the new, limited-edition Trump passport.
One guest gravely asked whether this would apply to everyone seeking a new passport; another, younger man, eagerly asked how to get one.
By that point, we had had enough. A few days later, the friend I went with texted me, describing a “psychic shock” he got from the fair.
“Things are worse than I thought,” he wrote.
(see accompanying pictures on the TPM site version of this article)
