Washington — President Donald Trump had dinner Tuesday night time at a seafood restaurant close to the White Home, selling his deployment of the Nationwide Guard and federalizing the police pressure in an effort to crack down on crime within the nation’s capital.
His motorcade made the brief distance to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab on fifteenth Avenue within the northwestern quadrant of town following weeks of the president boasting about mobilizing federal authorities and the navy that he says have made Washington “a protected zone.”
Cheers had been heard because the president stepped from his limo – although there was additionally a smattering of boos and chants from protesters opposing U.S. coverage in assist of Israel in its battle with Hamas in Gaza.
“We’re standing proper in the course of D.C., which as about, during the last yr, was a really unsafe place – during the last 20 years – and now it is acquired nearly no crime,” Mr. Trump informed reporters.
He added that he would not have stood out “in the course of the road” as lately as a few months in the past. The suggestion was farcical, nevertheless, and did not truly replicate whether or not crime ranges had modified in Washington, because the president is all the time surrounded by heavy safety wherever he goes.
After getting into the restaurant, video on social media confirmed him shaking fingers with some diners inside. However he additionally stared for an prolonged interval at a small group of protesters who held up miniature Gaza flags and chanted: “Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
The president moved nearer to them and might be seen gesturing briefly however did not seem to talk.
Seconds later, Mr. Trump gestured for the world to be cleared out, then gestured once more.
Secret Service brokers eliminated the protesters, saying repeatedly, “Time to go. Time to go.” Some protesters waved banners of the Palestinian flag as they had been leaving.
Others within the restaurant might be heard booing or chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Alex Brandon / AP
Feminist group Codepink says it was the group that had the protestors within the restaurant.
Some eating places have reported drops in reservations since Mr. Trump first introduced the federal crackdown on Aug. 7, whereas there have been frequent road protests decrying his actions. Elevated navy and police presence additionally has sometimes sparked standoffs between residents and authorities in usually quiet neighborhoods.
Mr. Trump has nonetheless mentioned repeatedly that he is spoken to buddies who inform him native eating places are full and that individuals have observed a drop in crime. He says he is additionally heard that individuals admire crews working to take away homeless encampments as a part of the crackdown.
Accompanying the president for dinner had been Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, in addition to Susie Wiles, the White Home chief of workers. In his feedback earlier than going into dinner, Mr. Trump mentioned, “The eating places are booming.”
“Persons are going out to dinner the place they did not exit for years,” he mentioned.
After Mr. Trump returned to the White Home after 10 p.m., press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was additionally amongst those that dined with him, mentioned he’d eaten crab, shrimp, salad, steak and dessert.
The tour was notable because the president not often dines away from the White Home when he is in Washington. And such outings have gotten even much less widespread since he offered the lodge bearing his identify just a few blocks away, which was a key assembly level for administration officers and supporters throughout his first time period.
The White Home reported Tuesday that there had been practically 2,200 arrests since Mr. Trump first introduced the Washington crackdown on Aug. 7.
Along with Washington, Trump deployed the Nationwide Guard to Los Angeles in June and has threatened to ship troops to different, largely Democratic cities, together with Baltimore, New Orleans and Chicago – the place state and native authorities already are bracing for operations to sharply improve immigration enforcement.
He mentioned Tuesday night time, “We’ll be asserting one other metropolis that we’ll very shortly,” then mentioned it might be as quickly as Wednesday. He added that the mayor of that metropolis and the governor of the state it’s in “would love us to be there.”
That follows Trump posting over the weekend a parody picture from “Apocalypse Now” that includes a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the lakefront and skyline of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest metropolis.
“‘I really like the scent of deportations within the morning,'” Trump wrote on his social media web site. “Chicago about to seek out out why it is known as the Division of WAR.”
Within the publish, Trump provided no particulars past the label “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the title of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam Conflict movie, through which a personality says, “I really like the scent of napalm within the morning.”
Final week, Trump signed an government order searching for to rename the Protection Division because the Division of Conflict – even after months of campaigning to be thought of for the Nobel Peace Prize. The renaming requires congressional approval.
In his personal publish in response, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker known as Trump a “wannabe dictator.” He has joined state and metropolis officers – and plenty of Chicago residents – in decrying the concept of a federal crackdown as pointless.
