{"id":215188,"date":"2025-09-10T09:52:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T09:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/215188\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T09:52:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T09:52:14","slug":"trump-promotes-deploying-national-guard-by-dining-at-dc-restaurant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/215188\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump promotes deploying National Guard by dining at DC restaurant"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> had dinner Tuesday night at a seafood restaurant near the White House, promoting his deployment of the National Guard<\/a> and federalizing the police force in an effort to crack down<\/a> on crime in the nation\u2019s capital. <\/p>\n

His motorcade made the short distance to Joe\u2019s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab on 15th Street in the northwestern quadrant of the city following weeks of the president boasting about mobilizing federal authorities and the military that he says have made Washington \u201ca safe zone.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cheers were heard as the president stepped from his limo \u2014 though there was also a smattering of boos and chants from protesters opposing U.S. policy in support of Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re standing right in the middle of D.C., which as you know about, over the last year, was a very unsafe place \u2014 over the last 20 years \u2014 and now it\u2019s got virtually no crime,\u201d Trump told reporters.<\/p>\n

He added that he wouldn\u2019t have stood out \u201cin the middle of the street\u201d as recently as a couple of months ago. The suggestion was farcical, however, and didn\u2019t actually reflect whether crime levels had changed in Washington, since the president is always surrounded by heavy security wherever he goes. <\/p>\n

After entering the restaurant, a video posted on social media showed Trump shaking hands with some diners inside. But he also stared for an extended period at a small group of protesters who held up miniature Gaza flags and chanted: \u201cFree D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!\u201d <\/p>\n

The president moved closer to them and could be seen gesturing briefly, but didn\u2019t appear to speak. <\/p>\n

Some restaurants have reported drops in reservations since Trump first announced the federal crackdown on Aug. 7, while there have been frequent street protests decrying his actions. Increased military and police presence also has occasionally sparked standoffs<\/a> between residents and authorities in normally quiet neighborhoods. <\/p>\n

Trump has nonetheless said repeatedly that he\u2019s spoken to friends who tell him local restaurants are full and that people have noticed a drop in crime. He says he\u2019s also heard that people appreciate crews working to remove homeless encampments as part of the crackdown. <\/p>\n

Accompanying the president for dinner were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff. In his comments before going into dinner, Trump said, \u201cThe restaurants are booming.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are going out to dinner where they didn\u2019t go out for years,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

After Trump returned to the White House after 10 p.m., press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was also among those who dined with Trump, said he had eaten crab, shrimp, salad, steak and dessert.<\/p>\n

The excursion was notable since Trump rarely dines away from the White House when he\u2019s in Washington. And such outings have gotten even less common since he sold the hotel bearing his name a few blocks away, which was a key meeting point for administration officials and supporters during his first term.<\/p>\n

The White House reported Tuesday that there had been nearly 2,200 arrests since Trump first announced the Washington crackdown on Aug. 7. <\/p>\n

In addition to Washington, Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles<\/a> in June and has threatened to send troops to other, largely Democratic cities, including Baltimore, New Orleans and Chicago \u2014 where state and local authorities already are bracing for operations to sharply increase immigration enforcement. <\/p>\n

He said Tuesday night, \u201cWe\u2019re going to be announcing another city that we\u2019re going to very shortly,\u201d then said it could be as soon as Wednesday. He added that the mayor of that city and the governor of the state it is in \u201cwould love us to be there.\u201d <\/p>\n

That follows Trump posting over the weekend a parody image<\/a> from \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d featuring a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the lakefront and skyline of Chicago, the nation\u2019s third-largest city. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I love the smell of deportations in the morning,\u2019\u201d Trump wrote on his social media site. \u201cChicago about to find out why it\u2019s called the Department of WAR.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the post, Trump offered no details beyond the label \u201cChipocalypse Now,\u201d a play on the title of Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1979 Vietnam War film, in which a character says, \u201cI love the smell of napalm in the morning.\u201d <\/p>\n

Last week, Trump signed an executive order<\/a> seeking to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War \u2014 even after months of campaigning to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. The renaming requires congressional approval.<\/p>\n

In his own post in response, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called Trump a \u201cwannabe dictator.\u201d He has joined state and city officials \u2014 and many Chicago residents \u2014 in decrying the idea of a federal crackdown as unnecessary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump had dinner Tuesday night at a seafood restaurant near the White House,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":215189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[960,12785,84,69,32729,57,51,72794,2066,8133,410,8132,50,6986,80,402,114557,52,61,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-215188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-dc-wire","10":"tag-district-of-columbia","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-francis-ford-coppola","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-j-b-pritzker","16":"tag-jd-vance","17":"tag-karoline-leavitt","18":"tag-marco-rubio","19":"tag-military-and-defense","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-pete-hegseth","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","24":"tag-susie-wiles","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-u-s-news","27":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115179391868124768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}