“This should have been the highlight of my life,” said Mrs Lewis. “This should have been like the World Exposition. But most of the states are a bit of a disappointment. It would have been really good if Fifa had run this. This feels like a silent protest.”
The fair’s organisers – the Freedom 250 committee set up to oversee the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations – declined to reveal attendance records.
But the area is huge, and crowds do seem sparse. A gymnast doing tricks with hoops on a podium drew a crowd of maybe 30 people spread out on the grass. Arizona had clocked up 3,000 visitors to its display on the first Sunday of the fair. But its booth was one of the better ones.
“I think we would have had a lot more people if Trump wasn’t president,” said Wiley Larsen, who was counting visitors through the Arizona booth. He’s a Trump voter – “I think he’s doing a lot of great things,” he said – but recognises the president’s divisiveness.
Out on the Mall, the fair’s centrepiece is a Ferris wheel that’s 110ft high (the London Eye is four times the height), although its operation has been reportedly disrupted by power outages which also resulted in melted ice cream.
A rodeo ring has also been constructed in which a cowboy rides a bucking bronco or bull once a day. “It’s not a real rodeo,” one of those involved in its construction whispered.
Then there’s a scaled-down replica of the president’s planned 250ft victory arch, which online critics have likened to a miniature Stonehenge in the spoof documentary This is Spinal Tap! Others said it looked like it had been bought from the bargain website Temu.
