Protesters chanting 'Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!' disrupted a dinner attended by US President Donald Trump at a Washington DC restaurant on Tuesday. Videos posted online showed Trump approaching the demonstrators, nodding and smiling before gesturing for them to be cleared out, saying 'Come on, let's go.' Secret Service agents then moved the protesters, who waved Palestinian flags, while other diners chanted 'U-S-A!'
The feminist activist group Code Pink claimed responsibility for the protest, stating on social media: 'While Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others feasted at a steakhouse, we stood our ground and told them the truth: Free DC. Free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time.'
Trump was dining at Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, near the White House, to promote his crime crackdown in the capital, which included deploying the National Guard and federalising the police force. He told reporters that Washington DC had become 'a safe zone' and that restaurants were now 'booming' as a result.
The dinner was a rare public dining event for Trump, who was joined by Vice-President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Leavitt confirmed the group enjoyed crab, shrimp, salad, steak and dessert.
This incident follows a similar heckling of Vance in August while he handed out hamburgers to National Guard troops in DC, where a man called him a 'Nazi'. Despite Trump's claims of reduced crime, data shows crime in DC was at a 30-year low before the troop deployment, and federal agents have focused largely on minor offences such as marijuana use and public alcohol consumption.
