A 110-foot Ferris wheel is the centerpiece of the Great American State Fair currently come to town in our nation’s capital, which is not a state the last time I checked. It is the brainchild of Freedom 250, an organization overseeing—or, rather, botching—the president’s $60 million marquee celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

On opening day, the Ferris wheel stalled. It lurched. It stopped. It started. Then stopped again. Freedom 250’s spokesperson Julia Friedland called it a “power hiccup.”

She didn’t know how right she was.

You could not have planned this level of epic and symbolic failure if you tried.

On opening night, Trump told another truly Trumpian whopper, claiming the fair drew 45,000 people. He also said everybody stayed until the end of his speech and “loved hearing about a truly successful America,” even as photographs showed dozens of attendees walking out while he was still talking.

Independent estimates placed opening night attendance at somewhere just north of 1,000, and days later, even the most frothy MAGA-loyal coverage from the scene couldn’t obscure the fact that crowds simply have not materialized.

When critical coverage rolled in, Trump did what Trump does: He woke up at 6:27 a.m. (likely, earlier still; it’ll surely take some time to massage those bruised sausage fingers into a state ready to rage-tweet) and fired off a Truth Social meltdown. “Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with........

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