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.”.....

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!”

Some of Donald Trump's most reliable supporters are pushing back after the White House announced the president would deliver a speech as the replacement for artists who pulled out of the America 250 celebration, with critics on the right calling the move self-aggrandizing and tone-deaf.

The White House promoted the event as an "AMERICA IS BACK Rally!" but prominent conservative voices were not impressed.

Matt Walsh, the right-wing commentator and one of Trump's most prominent media allies, called the decision an unforced error. "Replacing a concert with a speech is lame and boring," Walsh wrote on X. "Just go out and get real musicians to play. Don't cancel the concert just because a bunch of washed up old has-beens canceled. There are hundreds of artists out there who might not be famous but would absolutely leap at the chance to play on a stage like this."

Jenna Ellis, the former Trump campaign lawyer who was among those charged in the Georgia election interference case, was more direct. "America 250 is not about Trump," she wrote. "This is so egotistical."

Conservative commentator Jackie Chea made a similar point, suggesting Trump "shouldn't make the concert into a rally" and instead should "channel his Show Biz days and let new artists compete with patriotic songs."