As Vice President JD Vance staged a lunch to thank the National Guard members that President Donald Trump has deployed to Washington, DC, he was frequently drowned out by protesters.
Blocked from the second floor of a Shake Shack in Union Station — where Vance, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, were chatting with the guard Wednesday afternoon — protesters loudly chanted “shame,” “this is our city,” and “we want the military out of our streets.”
“You hear these guys outside. They appear to hate the idea that Americans can enjoy their communities,” Vance told reporters, at one point, calling them “crazy protesters.” Miller dismissed them as “elderly white hippies,” saying without evidence that they’re “not part of the city.”
The visit illustrated the stark divide between the Trump administration and DC residents, who overwhelmingly voted against the president. Roughly eight in 10 DC residents oppose Trump ordering the federal government to take control of the city’s police department as well as his deployment of the National Guard and FBI to patrol the city, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Vance dismissed those figures Wednesday, saying he was “highly skeptical that a majority of DC residents don’t want their city to have better public safety and more reasonable safety standards.”
The vice president repeatedly claimed Union Station had been taken over by “drug addicts,” “vagrants” and the “chronically homeless” in recent years.
“We have changed so much in nine days, and I thought it important to highlight how great of a space this could be, how easy it could be to actually enjoy something like Union Station if you just had politicians who stopped prioritizing violent criminals over the public citizens who deserve public safety in their own communities,” Vance said.
Vice President JD Vance greets members of the National Guard at the Shake Shack in Union Station on Wednesday. – Eric Lee for CNN
Democrats and DC officials have frequently questioned why the Trump administration is taking over DC now, when local crime numbers have decreased over previous years. Vance argued Wednesday that he thinks crime statistics nationwide are “massively underreported.”
Asked if there were Department of Justice statistics to back that up, he replied: “You just got to look around. Obviously, DC has a terrible crime problem. The Department of Justice statistics back it up. The FBI statistics back it up. Just talk to a resident of this city.”
Two sources have told CNN that the Justice Department is investigating whether Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department manipulated crime data.
Many of the National Guard members at Shake Shack on Wednesday said they had come from South Carolina — one of six red states that have announced they have or will send guard members to DC. Others include West Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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