{"id":162152,"date":"2026-09-02T14:43:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T22:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/02\/the-minnesota-state-fair-is-making-trumps-great-american-state-fair-look-like-the-pathetic-failure-that-it-was\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T14:43:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T22:43:56","slug":"the-minnesota-state-fair-is-making-trumps-great-american-state-fair-look-like-the-pathetic-failure-that-it-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/02\/the-minnesota-state-fair-is-making-trumps-great-american-state-fair-look-like-the-pathetic-failure-that-it-was\/","title":{"rendered":"The Minnesota State Fair Is Making Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair Look Like The Pathetic Failure That It Was"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer, Donald Trump hijacked the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a slate of events designed to celebrate himself. One of these, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was what he called the Great American State Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This event was a spectacular failure from the start, as almost every musical act pulled out in advance and literally dozens of attendees showed up for such wild entertainment as close to 200 baptisms<\/a> over the course of 16 days. A spokesperson affiliated with Trump\u2019s partisan group that planned the event claimed about 150,000 people showed up over the course of the first three days of the Great American State Fair, but this administration lies about everything (especially crowd sizes<\/a>), and anyone with eyes could see that far fewer people than that actually attended. Trump\u2019s propagandists have declined to release more detailed attendance data and haven\u2019t described how they came up with the numbers they did release.<\/p>\n

Even if you believe the Trump administration\u2019s lies, though, in contrast, the first few days of the Minnesota State Fair easily made Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair look like the pathetic failure that it was. The opening day of the Minnesota State Fair, Thursday, August 27, smashed a previous first-day record with 155,185 people<\/a> coming through the gates.<\/p>\n

Unlike Trump event organizers, the Minnesota State Fair\u2019s number crunchers don\u2019t make up attendance numbers, and instead record them very precisely by simply keeping track of how many entry tickets are scanned each day. Then accurate data is released publicly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second day of the Minnesota State Fair, a Friday, set another attendance record at 204,065 entries. The first Saturday and Sunday of the fair were down a bit from previous record highs for those days, but still saw 198,842 and 171,054 people, respectively, come out for some fair food and good times.<\/p>\n

So, even if you believe Trump\u2019s imaginary numbers (and you shouldn\u2019t), far more people came to the Minnesota State Fair on every single one of its first four days than came to the Great American State Fair total during its first three days combined. Plus the Minnesota State Fair didn\u2019t have a bunch of pullouts from either its grandstand shows or free musical performances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, prices at the Minnesota State Fair largely held steady<\/a> year-over-year, whereas every day was $13.75 Budweiser day<\/a> at the Great American State Fair. While I\u2019m not going to claim that everything at the Minnesota State Fair is exactly cheap, at least for what you\u2019re paying you get an extreme variety of old favorites and novel delights<\/a> to choose from, a few unique gems that you can\u2019t even find anywhere else, and the occasional true bargain (my favorite is the all you can drink milk<\/a> stand, your choice white or chocolate, where my personal record for a single visit is 108 ounces).<\/p>\n

Of course, the question remains: great state fair, or the greatest state fair? The State Fair of Texas gets more total attendees than the Minnesota State Fair, but it needs 24 days to do it, and the Minnesota State Fair has a higher daily attendance average<\/a> over its mere 12 days. Compared to Minnesota, Texas also has more than five times the population to draw on, giving some perspective to its somewhat higher overall attendance totals.<\/p>\n

Still, while Minnesota has a little something extra special going on with its state fair, no one can dispute that Texas also has a pretty dang great state fair. So do many other states. In fact, the daily average attendance for each of the top 15 state fairs in the U.S. beats the claimed daily average attendance of 50,000 for the first three days of Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair.<\/p>\n

What makes all these state fairs special is that they are each about a place, the people who call that place home, and the many out-of-state visitors they welcome right along with the locals. A state gets to show off a little of what it has to offer at its state fair. On the other hand, a good state fair is not about cramming religion down anyone\u2019s throat or polishing one man\u2019s tremendous ego.<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t make it to the Great American State Fair, join the club, almost nobody did. But it\u2019s not too late to make it to an original, far better, far more authentic state fair in Minnesota. The Great Minnesota Get-Together<\/a> runs through Labor Day, and until then, it\u2019s going to continue to show up any and all pathetic, partisan imitators.<\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Your Debt-Free JD<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn\u2019t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>jon_wolf@hotmail.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The post The Minnesota State Fair Is Making Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair Look Like The Pathetic Failure That It Was<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Mark Wilson\/Getty Images)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This summer, Donald Trump hijacked the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a slate of events designed to celebrate himself. One of these, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was what he called the Great American State Fair<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This event was a spectacular failure from the start, as almost every musical act pulled out in advance and literally dozens of attendees showed up for such wild entertainment as close to 200 baptisms<\/a> over the course of 16 days. A spokesperson affiliated with Trump\u2019s partisan group that planned the event claimed about 150,000 people showed up over the course of the first three days of the Great American State Fair, but this administration lies about everything (especially crowd sizes<\/a>), and anyone with eyes could see that far fewer people than that actually attended. Trump\u2019s propagandists have declined to release more detailed attendance data and haven\u2019t described how they came up with the numbers they did release.<\/p>\n

Even if you believe the Trump administration\u2019s lies, though, in contrast, the first few days of the Minnesota State Fair easily made Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair look like the pathetic failure that it was. The opening day of the Minnesota State Fair, Thursday, August 27, smashed a previous first-day record with 155,185 people<\/a> coming through the gates.<\/p>\n

Unlike Trump event organizers, the Minnesota State Fair\u2019s number crunchers don\u2019t make up attendance numbers, and instead record them very precisely by simply keeping track of how many entry tickets are scanned each day. Then accurate data is released publicly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second day of the Minnesota State Fair, a Friday, set another attendance record at 204,065 entries. The first Saturday and Sunday of the fair were down a bit from previous record highs for those days, but still saw 198,842 and 171,054 people, respectively, come out for some fair food and good times.<\/p>\n

So, even if you believe Trump\u2019s imaginary numbers (and you shouldn\u2019t), far more people came to the Minnesota State Fair on every single one of its first four days than came to the Great American State Fair total during its first three days combined. Plus the Minnesota State Fair didn\u2019t have a bunch of pullouts from either its grandstand shows or free musical performances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, prices at the Minnesota State Fair largely held steady<\/a> year-over-year, whereas every day was $13.75 Budweiser day<\/a> at the Great American State Fair. While I\u2019m not going to claim that everything at the Minnesota State Fair is exactly cheap, at least for what you\u2019re paying you get an extreme variety of old favorites and novel delights<\/a> to choose from, a few unique gems that you can\u2019t even find anywhere else, and the occasional true bargain (my favorite is the all you can drink milk<\/a> stand, your choice white or chocolate, where my personal record for a single visit is 108 ounces).<\/p>\n

Of course, the question remains: great state fair, or the greatest state fair? The State Fair of Texas gets more total attendees than the Minnesota State Fair, but it needs 24 days to do it, and the Minnesota State Fair has a higher daily attendance average<\/a> over its mere 12 days. Compared to Minnesota, Texas also has more than five times the population to draw on, giving some perspective to its somewhat higher overall attendance totals.<\/p>\n

Still, while Minnesota has a little something extra special going on with its state fair, no one can dispute that Texas also has a pretty dang great state fair. So do many other states. In fact, the daily average attendance for each of the top 15 state fairs in the U.S. beats the claimed daily average attendance of 50,000 for the first three days of Trump\u2019s Great American State Fair.<\/p>\n

What makes all these state fairs special is that they are each about a place, the people who call that place home, and the many out-of-state visitors they welcome right along with the locals. A state gets to show off a little of what it has to offer at its state fair. On the other hand, a good state fair is not about cramming religion down anyone\u2019s throat or polishing one man\u2019s tremendous ego.<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t make it to the Great American State Fair, join the club, almost nobody did. But it\u2019s not too late to make it to an original, far better, far more authentic state fair in Minnesota. The Great Minnesota Get-Together<\/a> runs through Labor Day, and until then, it\u2019s going to continue to show up any and all pathetic, partisan imitators.<\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Your Debt-Free JD<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn\u2019t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>[email\u00a0protected]<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, Donald Trump hijacked the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a slate of events designed to celebrate himself. One of these, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was what he called the Great American State Fair. This event was a spectacular failure from the start, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/trump-GettyImages-1192141437-kQhALE.jpg?fit=1024%2C742&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}