President Donald Trump on Tuesday dined out in public to promote his crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C. While Fox News praised the effort as proof that his federal takeover is working, critics on social media saw right through the “performative” stunt.
“Fox News alert, Donald Trump is out on the town,” said Laura Ingraham on her show Tuesday. “Dinner with members of his cabinet in D.C., showing it’s safe to walk around the city after deploying the National Guard. Crime, as we know, has plummeted in the city.”
Trump federalized the district’s Metropolitan Police Department last month and deployed the National Guard to quell the supposed “bedlam” there, leading to protests, arrests, and a naturally expected reduction in crime, which was already creeping down at the time.
The president nonetheless championed himself by leaving the White House for dinner Tuesday, and had a convoy of black SUVs drive him, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a restaurant 0.1 miles away.
“We’re standing right in the middle of D.C., which is, as you know, over the last year was a very unsafe place,” he told reporters outside Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab. “Over the last 20 years, actually, was very unsafe. And now it’s got virtually no crime.”
