Trump to headline Great American State Fair after music acts cancel

President Donald Trump will headline an opening ceremony for the Great American State Fair on the National Mall next month after many of the musical performers slated for the event canceled, citing the event’s associations with him.

The Great American State Fair — organized by Freedom 250, a Trump-aligned entity he created by executive order to plan semiquincentennial events — this week announced a lineup of performers. More than half canceled shortly thereafter, including Martina McBride and Bret Michaels, claiming they had not known about the organizing group’s connections to the president.

After Trump said on his Truth Social platform Saturday that he understood “Artists are getting ‘the yips’” about performing and suggested headlining the event himself, Danielle Alvarez, an adviser to Freedom 250, confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump will now kick off an opening event for the fair.

“As the visionary behind the Great American State Fair, we are excited to announce that President Trump will personally kick off this historic celebration on Wednesday, June 24 in an opening ceremony celebrating America’s 250th birthday,” Alvarez said in a statement first shared with The Post. She called the multiday event “a World’s Fair celebrating the people, traditions, innovations, and spirit that make America the greatest nation on Earth.”

Trump earlier Saturday said that he was “ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally.”

Two of Trump’s advisers told The Post on Saturday, on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly, that they were quickly working to make his suggestion of being the fair’s opening act a reality.

While the president’s post suggested he wanted his speech to take place on Wednesday, the Great American State Fair was originally set to begin June 25 and run through July 10.

Prior to Freedom 250 confirming the newly planned speech, Trump in his Truth Social post wrote that he was “thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

“Only Great Patriots invited,” Trump wrote, saying the rally would be a “Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America!”

The White House earlier declined to comment on the performer cancellations, noting that it wasn’t organizing the event.