Please Come: Trump Pleads, the Mall Empties, and a Dead Cat Sings the National Anthem

There are moments in history when a political system caricatures itself so precisely that any outside commentary becomes unnecessary. The evening of June 24, 2026 on the National Mall in Washington was one of those moments. Donald Trump, 80 years old, President of the United States, stood behind bulletproof glass and asked his supporters to come to his next appearance. Not with persuasion. With the naked fear of a man who knows what empty seats mean.

“Your favorite president will be speaking, so please show up,” he said. “Because if we have two empty seats, you know what will happen? The fake news media will say he didn’t fill the arena.”

Jeb Bush said to a room of silent supporters in 2016: “Please clap.” He lost every primary afterward. Trump apparently did not take a political lesson from that episode, only an aesthetic one: you have to beg louder.

The evening had been planned as the opening ceremony of the Great American State Fair, a 16-day event on the National Mall marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump had announced it as “the rally to end all rallies.” What the evening actually ended was harder to say, possibly the belief that MAGA mobilization still works reliably.

CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan reported live from the site twenty minutes before Trump’s appearance. Behind him: substantial empty space across the lawn. One hour before Trump’s speech, the area was about half full. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins shared a photo of herself and the crowd on X and empty chairs were clearly visible. The photo was not deleted. It exists. At the same time, Trump posted an image of the same event on his platform Truth Social, filmed from the stage at an angle that concealed the gaps. Two pictures of the same reality, and both are right: people were there. Just not enough to drown out the silence.

People left the venue while the president was still speaking. At 9:18 PM, just under thirty minutes after the beginning of his speech, the crowd had visibly thinned out. Trump, behind bulletproof glass delivering his familiar topics - oil prices, prescription drug discounts, the “mutilation” of children through gender transition - seemed to sense it. He asked for applause for July 4. He asked for attendance. He asked.

What the evening’s program reveals about the state of the event may be even more telling than the images of empty lawns. Originally Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, the Commodores, and Milli Vanilli had been booked. All canceled. Milli Vanilli - a group that lost its Grammy in 1990 because it had not sung a single word on its hit album - called the event a “circus” and preferred to stay away from the circus. When a group whose entire career was built on deception cancels an appearance for ethical reasons, that is a cultural diagnosis that needs no further explanation.

As a replacement, Lee Greenwood performed, 83 years old, who has been singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” since 1984 and has essentially been doing the same ever since. His voice was audibly struggling that evening. At the end of his performance, a B2 bomber drowned out the applause - a military flyover staged as the highlight that mainly raised the question of whether the aircraft was the only reliable element of the evening.

The evening had been opened by Alexis Wilkins, 27, a singer from Nashville and girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, booked at short notice the day before to perform the national anthem. Her most successful recording on Spotify has a few hundred thousand plays - a benchmark in the music industry roughly equivalent to what a medium-sized animal shelter reaches on Instagram. One attendee, asked whether she was excited for Wilkins’ performance, said: “Well, I think the Army band and the choirs, they’re going to be really good.” That was probably the kindest public judgment of the evening.

Online, people were less polite. “She sounds like a DEAD CAT,” someone wrote. “Hello, D.C. Police. I’d like to report a murder. Yes, somebody brutally murdered the national anthem.” Another asked: “Was Milli Vanilli unavailable?” which, given Milli Vanilli’s own cancellation, had a special level of depth.

Wilkins herself responded to the criticism with a statement in which she explained that she has a “successful career in music and commentary/strategy,” accepted no payment for the performance, and had been booked on her own merits, not through the influence of her boyfriend Kash Patel. Right-wing reporter Sara Higdon had previously asked whether booking the FBI director’s girlfriend at taxpayer expense violated federal ethics laws. The organization behind the event is a nonprofit founded by Trump allies that, according to NOTUS, received around 80 million dollars in taxpayer funds. Whether that answers the ethics question or raises it even more is open to interpretation.

Sean Duffy: “We should give our military band and our singers a big round of applause - way better than those left-wing idiots who canceled on us.”

Trump had promoted his appearance on Truth Social with the sentence: “We don’t want singers with no talent but huge fees who put you to sleep. We told them all to stay home. All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the greatest music ever played.”

The greatest music ever played that evening was “God Bless the U.S.A.” from 1984 and “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen - the latter despite explicit objections from the Cohen estate, which stated publicly that this use was “not authorized” and that the estate did not support it. Trump’s selected opera singer Christopher Macchio performed the song anyway. It was the third time Trump had used “Hallelujah” at an event after the Cohen estate had prohibited it.

The evening was also framed by the ongoing disaster surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Trump had wanted the pool painted in “American Flag Blue” for the celebrations. The result was paint floating on the surface, algae, dead ducks, and protests. That evening Trump declared that the pool was “beautiful” and already looked “perfect,” and that it would “soon look like it did two weeks ago.” The paint is still floating.

Guy Debord wrote in the 1960s about the society of the spectacle - about a world in which the image no longer reflects reality but replaces it. What took place on June 24 on the National Mall was spectacle in its late form: a state celebration without artists, a crowd leaving before the president finishes, a president promoting his own event like a promoter whose ticket sales collapsed, and a picture on Truth Social showing what should have been.

Democratic Party Chairman Ken Martin commented: “Donald Trump does what he does best: he spends money on glittering, Trump-centered events while making Americans pay the bill.” That is not analysis. That is the summary of an evening that explained itself.

Trump is scheduled to speak again on the National Mall on July 4. He asked that more people come this time. Your favorite president will be speaking. Please show up.