Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair has been postponed due to extreme heat.
It was announced Friday afternoon over loudspeakers at the National Mall by Freedom 250 organizers that the fair would be postponed until 5 p.m. ET. The delay comes as a record-breaking heat dome settles over the East Coast, bringing temperatures near or above 100 degrees.
“Dana, it’s so hot that it’s difficult to keep our technology operating right now, keeping it cool enough where the batteries are,” meteorologist Derek Van Dam told CNN’s Dana Bash from the grounds Friday. “This is the kind of heat that people are getting pulled away by emergency personnel in the back of some of the fire departments’ vehicles here, in sirens, going to cooler shade, trying their best to keep them and get down their internal lower temperature.”
He added: “So, how hot is it? Well, it’s record-breaking hot. Red, hot and blue, blistering under the sun. I’ve got the CNN weather app pulled up on my phone, so we’re getting updates every minute here, basically. And the ‘feels like’ temperature is right now 111 degrees.”
The heat is expected to set records for the area and the holiday. The CNN report from the grounds noted that there was up to a 20-degree difference between shaded areas and direct sun, and that temperatures on the ground reached 135 degrees on Van Dam’s digital thermometer.
“It’s very likely that this will go down as the hottest Fourth of July celebration that this country has ever experienced here in D.C.,” Van Dam said.
The Great American State Fair has been mired in issues since it kicked off last Friday. Along with debilitating heat, there have also been power outages, poor attendance and, apparently, a Confederate flag issue.
Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who served in Illinois from 2011 to 2023, wrote on X, “Wow. Turns out people aren’t very MAGA after all.”
