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Trump visits DC restaurant, hints at federal troop deployment to another US city
Donald Trump made a surprise visit to a Washington, DC, restaurant in a bid to argue his federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement is working.
President Donald Trump said he plans to deploy federal troops to another US city, as he made a surprise visit to a Washington, DC, restaurant in a bid to argue his federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement is working.
“We’ll announce it probably tomorrow, and it’s going to be something where we will do like we did here,” Trump told reporters Tuesday outside Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab, an upscale surf and turf restaurant near the White House.
The president said he was working with a governor “who would love us to be there,” though didn’t name the city, state nor politician he was in contact with. Trump earlier this month suggested he might deploy the National Guard to New Orleans, which is in a state that has a Republican governor, before his long-threatened operation in Chicago, where Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson have opposed such a move.
Trump has claimed Washington is now effectively a “crime-free zone” after he placed the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deployed National Guard troops to the capital to crack down on what he had cast as rampant lawlessness and violence. The announcement came as crime rates were falling in the city, with the Justice Department reporting in January that violent offenses had fallen to a 30-year low in 2024.
While a poll last month showed the move unpopular with the capital’s residents, Trump has insisted that his actions have improved the quality of life there. He’s repeatedly shared anecdotes from unnamed friends who he said told him that they felt safer in Washington and were venturing out to enjoy the city’s dining and cultural attractions for the first time in years.
Trump has claimed that DC’s restaurants are now “busier than ever” and previously floated visiting one.
“I love the White House food, but after a while, I can see going to a nice restaurant. It’s safe,” Trump had said.
Data from the reservation site OpenTable showed bookings falling again last week amid the federal takeover, television station WUSA reported Monday, as many locals say they remain wary of going out amid the surge in law enforcement and military personnel.
A smattering of cheers and boos could be heard on the street as Trump exited his limousine outside the restaurant. Minutes later, a handful of protesters were seen being escorted out of Joe’s waving pro-Palestinian flags.
“Free DC. Free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time,” the demonstrators chanted.
Trump was cheered as he entered Joe’s and proclaimed to those gathered in the bar area “we have a safe city now” before imploring them “don’t drink too much.”
Trump’s stop at Joe’s marked the first known visit to a restaurant in DC during his second term in office. During his first term in office he visited only one DC restaurant — BLT Prime — the steakhouse located in the hotel he once owned just blocks from the White House.
Trump was said to regularly request the same order: a shrimp cocktail along with a well-done steak and fries, according to the Washingtonian. That restaurant is now closed and the hotel was reopened as a Waldorf Astoria.
Trump officials during his first term were sometimes confronted by protesters while dining, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and onetime White House press secretary and now Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sanders in 2018 said that she had been asked to leave The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.
Trump’s move to assert control over Washington’s law enforcement and draw attention to law-and-order issues this summer came amid a spate of headlines about his administration’s handling of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and his past connections to the late disgraced financier.
Those questions have once again reared their head after congressional Democrats this week released an image of an alleged birthday card for Epstein from 2003 that is said to bear his signature. Trump has denied he signed the card and he swatted away questions from reporters about the matter before walking inside.
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