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 ceaselessly drowned out by protesters.
Vance entered Union Station’s Shake Shack to a mixture of claps and boos, shaking palms and posing for pictures with a number of individuals ready to order lunch. As the boos grew louder, others within the crowd started chanting “USA, USA, USA” in response.
Blocked from the second ground of a Shake Shack in Union Station — the place Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of workers Stephen Miller had been chatting with greater than a dozen guards Wednesday afternoon — protesters loudly chanted “shame,” “this is our city,” and “we want the military out of our streets.”
Vance spoke to a small group of reporters, dismissing the rising refrain of protesters — whose chants briefly drowned out his press gaggle — by calling them “crazy” and “communists.” Miller dismissed them as “elderly white hippies,” saying with out proof that they’re “not part of the city.”
“But I’ll tell you, a couple of years ago, when I brought my kids here, they were being screamed at by violent vagrants, and it was scaring the hell out of my kids,” Vance added.
The go to illustrated the stark divide between the Trump administration and DC residents, who overwhelmingly voted in opposition to the president. Roughly eight in 10 DC residents oppose Trump ordering the federal authorities to take management of town’s police division in addition to his deployment of the National Guard and FBI to patrol town, in response to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Vance dismissed these 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.”
When requested in regards to the vp’s presence, Jay Swanson, a buyer consuming a burger, stated: “It’s disgusting, I lost my appetite.”
Vance repeatedly claimed Union Station had been taken over by “drug addicts,” “vagrants” and the “chronically homeless” lately.
“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 stated.
Swanson provided a counterpoint: “I don’t think it’s a crackdown on crime, I think it’s setting the stage for Trump to try and stay in past his term,” he stated, including: “The resolute courage of the American people will win it.”
Many of the National Guard members at Shake Shack on Wednesday stated they’d come from South Carolina — considered one of six pink states which have introduced they’ve or will ship guard members to DC. Others embody West Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee.
When requested in regards to the National Guard presence within the metropolis, a school scholar doing homework at Union Station who requested to not be named stated it was “overwhelming.”
“I thought I had read that the crime rate in DC is actually going down?” she stated.
Democrats and DC officers have ceaselessly questioned why the Trump administration is taking up DC now, when native crime numbers have decreased over earlier years. Vance argued Wednesday that he thinks crime statistics nationwide are “massively underreported.”
Asked if there have been Department of Justice statistics to again 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 informed NCS that the Justice Department is investigating whether or not Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department manipulated crime information.
As Vance wrapped up his lunch upstairs and descended again to the principle ground, one man loudly booed. “I heard you buddy,” Vance stated, making an attempt to brush off the second.
“This is the guy who thinks people don’t deserve law and order in their own community,” he stated to Hegseth, gesturing towards the person. Hegseth chuckled.
Outside the station, a second, smaller group of protesters gathered close to parked National Guard tanks. As Vance departed, they continued to shout and wave indicators.
“Criminals out of DC? Start with the Epstein files,” learn one signal.
This story has been up to date with further reporting.