Glenn Beck and an elk standing next to an Amazon box: The sights and sounds of the Great American State Fair

WASHINGTON – Wednesday’s theme at the Great American State Fair was “faith, values and inspiration.”

Just before 2 p.m., a voice interrupted the music playing over loudspeakers and announced that political commentator Glenn Beck was about to take the stage for the day’s headlining event, “a stirring tribute to the American experiment.” Then, Italian DJ Benny Benassi’s 2002 club hit “Satisfaction” suddenly rang out across the National Mall.

“Push me / and then just touch me / till I can get my / satisfaction,” the song’s robotic vocals repeated again and again, as attendees crisscrossed the lawn to the throbbing electro-house beat, ducking into air-conditioned tents to escape the nearly 100-degree heat.

On stage, Beck – a Washington state native and former Fox News host – was telling a crowd of several dozen people about Thomas Jefferson’s original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. Pointing out that Jefferson had denounced King George III in the document for opposing efforts to end slavery in the British Empire, Beck argued that the future American president would have abolished slavery at the United States’ founding – if only other members of the Continental Congress hadn’t objected to that part of the draft.

“How come we’re not taught that?” Beck asked, pointing at the widely available document. “Who has stolen my history? Why must we spend our whole life learning lies?”

After a detour to describe atrocities committed by the Barbary pirates, while young kids looked on from the front of the crowd, Beck landed on his main point: Americans should feel unwaveringly proud of their nation’s founders.

In his telling, Jefferson wasn’t a complicated man who embodied the contradictions of a nation founded on principles of equality that, while unrealized in his lifetime, laid the foundation for today’s multiracial democracy. Rather than describing America’s third president as a man who wrote passionately about the evils of slavery yet freed just a handful of the hundreds of people he personally enslaved, Beck presented Jefferson as an avatar of national virtue.

“The American story is so unbelievably glorious!” he said, brandishing his blue reading glasses. “They have robbed us of our story.”

Whoever “they” are, they didn’t seem to be involved in organizing the Great American State Fair, which has presented a uniformly sanguine version of American history and President Donald Trump’s place in it.

Other milestones in U.S. history have also coincided with moments when the nation’s social fabric was fraying, but past leaders generally tried to use the occasions to bring Americans together.

In 1871, just a few years removed from the Civil War and still in the throes of the Reconstruction Era, Congress debated how to mark the nation’s 100th birthday before agreeing to create a commission to plan the Centennial Exposition of 1876, a world’s fair that drew millions of visitors to Philadelphia for a demonstration of American innovation, industry and national pride.

Ten years before the bicentennial, Congress established a bipartisan commission to stage another exposition – in either Philadelphia or Boston. After years of debate, the commission scrapped that idea in favor of a temporary federal agency that helped plan local celebrations all across the country.

By the time 1976 rolled around, Americans were still reeling from the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. But in a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, then-President Gerald Ford sought to unite the nation behind its foundational values.

“Freedom is always worth fighting for, and liberty ultimately belongs to those willing to suffer for it,” Ford said on July 4, 1976. “If we remember this, we can bring health where there is disease, peace where there is strife, progress where there is poverty and want.”

Congress initially followed a similar playbook for the 250th anniversary, creating a bipartisan commission in 2016 called America 250.

During his campaign, Trump promised to work with all 50 state governors to put on a “Great American State Fair” in Iowa. But in a speech in Iowa to kick off the America 250 celebrations in July 2025, the president announced a change of plans: His fair would take place on the National Mall, in lieu of a nonpartisan celebration the Smithsonian Institution had been planning there.

After Trump attacked Democrats in the Iowa speech – “I hate them,” he said, “because I really do believe they hate our country” – some America 250 organizers objected to his divisive rhetoric, the Atlantic reported. In late 2025, the White House created a competing organization, dubbed Freedom 250, that has organized the fair and other events, including UFC fights at the White House on the president’s birthday in June.

In a report released Thursday, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee claim that America 250 received only $25 million of $150 million Congress allocated in 2025 for events to celebrate the 250th anniversary. The New York Times reported Thursday that $68 million has been routed through Freedom 250 for the fair and other events, with at least some of those taxpayer dollars going to a company run by former Trump campaign aides.

In a campaign-style speech on June 24 that kicked off the fair, which runs through Friday, the president declared, “America is back.”

“As you know very well, a short time ago we were a dead country,” Trump said. “Now, we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. We’re respected by everybody. Nobody’s laughing at us anymore.”

When it comes to the fair, at least, some people are laughing. Gleeful critics have shared viral images of sparse crowds and shoddily built structures, including a scale model of the 250-foot-tall triumphal arch Trump wants to build near Arlington National Cemetery.

After nearly all the musical acts booked for the event canceled, with some saying they had been misled into thinking it was a nonpartisan celebration, Trump declared he would headline the opening night, calling himself “the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.” One of the few performers who didn’t back out, rapper Vanilla Ice, got rained out and hasn’t rescheduled. The fair was temporarily shut down Friday due to extreme heat.

Aside from a Ferris wheel and a few farm animals, the event is more trade show than state fair. Corporate sponsors like Uber, Northrop Grumman and GE Aerospace touted their contributions to the American economy. At the Uber tent, a vote tally indicated that visitors were more excited about getting their takeout meals delivered by a little robot with wheels than about the flying taxi the company had on display.

In a mobile museum called the Freedom Truck, an AI-generated George Washington came to life and welcomed visitors by saying, “My name is George Washington. You may have heard of me.” Six such trucks will tour the country thanks to $24 million in federal funds, Reuters reported, the Trump administration has given to the conservative media organization PragerU and Hillsdale College, a center of conservative education reform.

Nearby, a circus troupe performed in the blazing sun while a handful of people watched from the grass. A few days earlier, a pro-Trump livestreamer in an Uncle Sam costume was arrested and charged with performing lewd acts while vaping and recording the acrobats.

Spaces were reserved for each state and U.S. territory to present itself to the world, with some displays perhaps more representative than others: A sand sculpture courtesy of Cape May County, New Jersey; bottles of rum and Advil from Puerto Rico; tiny bags of potato chips from Pennsylvania; tiny boxes of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – for display only – from Michigan.

Idaho’s exhibit, run by the state’s Department of Agriculture, featured a model cow with rubber udders that visitors could milk – the same cow was in Wisconsin’s booth – and displays promoting the chipmaker Micron, the agribusiness giant Simplot and the Idaho National Laboratory.

Notably absent were representatives of Washington and Oregon, 2 of 10 states with Democratic governors who declined to take part in the festivities. The Northwest neighbors shared a space, empty but for two chairs in each state’s cubicle, where a volunteer dutifully stamped the mock passports visitors were carrying.

Determined not to leave the walls blank, some intrepid graphic designer had compiled images representing each state. For Washington, that included an elk standing next to an Amazon package.

Some visitors appreciated the two rocking chairs in Washington’s otherwise empty booth. After taking a seat to get out of the sun, former preschool teacher Carol Batzel of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, said politicians in both parties remind her of toddlers. She said she wished more Americans would take to heart the idea of being “one nation under God.”

“When we pretend that he is not noticing our resentment of one another, that is so shortsighted and so much missing the point,” she said. “We were created to work together with one another and to honor the Lord, and not expect everybody to be the same, but to at least be civil with each other and work to find common good.”

Her husband, Carl Batzel, pointed out that most states led by Democrats were still represented in some form at the fair.

“Trump is going to try and take credit and steal the limelight out of everything,” he said, “but just ask yourself, is it a good thing for all the states to be represented?”

Lt. Gov. Denny Heck, a Democrat who chairs Washington state’s committee in charge of 250th anniversary celebrations, cited the state’s budget crunch to explain its absence from the fair.

“Our state is facing a very difficult fiscal situation, and with that in mind, given the significant costs associated with participating in the Great American State Fair, we chose to focus on supporting local efforts here in Washington state for this very important commemoration,” Heck said in a statement.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner isn’t buying that. The Spokane Republican personally manned his state’s booth on June 27, stamping passports and lambasting Gov. Bob Ferguson for declining to participate.

In an interview Wednesday, Baumgartner said he personally texted Ferguson after event organizers at the White House reached out to say Washington state wasn’t responding to their messages ahead of the fair. The governor, he said, didn’t text him back.

“We live in the greatest country in the history of the world,” Baumgartner said. “All the great things of America should be celebrated this year. It shouldn’t be part of some petty political battles or signaling.”

The congressman said his office had received a huge number of calls and messages from Washingtonians who want to help fill what he called a “pathetically empty” booth. He said Ferguson is fixated on opposing Trump on every front because the governor is “afraid” of his “radical left-wing base.”

“Does Trump make things overly partisan, political at times? Yeah,” Baumgartner said. “But it would have been such a great opportunity.”

Ferguson, a Democrat, declined to comment on Baumgartner’s criticism.

In posts on social media, Baumgartner has highlighted Trump’s other efforts – some more successful than others – to beautify the capital city. In a series of posts on June 28, he rode a bike around Washington, D.C., to visit newly polished statues and fountains that had sat dry for years until the Trump administration used revenue from national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone to pay for the overdue repairs.

Some of D.C.’s overwhelmingly anti-Trump residents have quietly welcomed those improvements, noting that any Democratic president would be too afraid of political backlash to redirect money from the Grand Canyon to urban parks in the nation’s capital. Locals have been less enthused about other ways Trump has sought to remake D.C. in his image – sometimes literally, with his visage on giant banners hanging from the Justice Department and Labor Department headquarters.

In an earlier post, Baumgartner hailed another renovation project the president has made a personal priority: the reflecting pool that lies between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Trump announced in April his administration would drain the pool, long troubled by leaks and recurring algae blooms, and coat the surface with a special kind of paint the president described as virtually indestructible.

“Don’t listen to the haters,” Baumgartner said in a video in front of the Lincoln Memorial on June 10, soon after the pool was refilled with water. “The reflecting pool looks awesome.”

Days later, the newly blue pool was bright green with algae. Critics have called the reflecting pool saga an apt metaphor for Trump’s approach to problems – a quick, superficial fix that doesn’t actually solve a longstanding challenge yet enriches his allies along the way.

After saying in May the pool renovation would take about a week and cost roughly $1.5 million, the president gave no-bid contracts to two companies with ties to him, and his administration has spent more than $16 million on the project. When the blue coating began to flake off, the president blamed vandals and federal police arrested six people for allegedly touching the paint, including a 67-year-old former Olympian who now faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Great American State Fair will continue Saturday, when the temperature on the National Mall is expected to top 100 degrees. A fireworks show, supposed to be the biggest ever, will be preceded by another appearance by the president, who said Wednesday he plans to “make a really long speech, just to show that I can do anything.”