Trump's first D.C. restaurant outing went horribly

Protesters chanted, “Free D.C., free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time," directly into the president's face in a room full of knives at Joe's Seafood.

credit: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

In some dark boardroom in the White House last night, a slew of Secret Service agents were probably being mass fired Apprentice-style and screamed at by a humiliated Donald Trump after his first-ever attempt to eat out at a restaurant in D.C. went terribly awry.

Videos of the outing—a cabinet meeting at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak, and Stone Crab, one block from the White House—show the president looking terrified and fully backed up against a wall as protesters chanted, “Free D.C., free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time," just a few yards from him, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, and other honchos. The protest was organized by the feminist anti-war group Code Pink, which somehow managed to find out where the president was eating that night, get a same-day reservation for the same general time, and scoot past security in order to heckle all the men running the country at the same time.

Trump had cast the restaurant adventure as proof that he finally feels safe to go out on the town in D.C. now that his fascist military takeover of the city has supposedly eliminated crime. “I wouldn’t have done this three months ago, four months ago, I certainly wouldn’t have done it a year ago,” Trump told reporters just before sitting down to dinner. “This was one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now it’s as safe as there is in the country, so we’re here with Cabinet members having dinner, and everybody should go out.”

This was all supposed to be part of Trump’s PR tour setting the stage for his planned takeover of “every Democrat-run city across the country,” starting with Chicago. A day earlier, Trump had claimed without evidence that crime in D.C. would actually be at zero now were it not for those pesky domestic violence incidents—perhaps like the ones he allegedly had with his ex-wife Ivana—messing up his stats.

“There’s no crime,” Trump said at the Museum of the Bible (LOL) Monday morning. “They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ It’s more than 87 percent—virtually nothing.”

“Things that take place in the home they call crime,” he continued. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this is a crime.”

Setting aside the president’s minimization of domestic violence, a bit of a fact check here: To the extent that crime is down in D.C., it’s because people are too afraid to visit the city or go out at all due to the overwhelming presence of armed troops and ICE agents there, which is actually wrecking the city’s economy. And crime was already at a 30-year low in the city when Trump invaded it.

But the president finally feels safe going out to dinner in D.C. for the first time ever, I suppose, despite having an enormous personal security detail and many bullet-proof vehicles. So it’s very unfortunate for him that his dining experience at Joe’s almost immediately produced videos of him looking pants-shitting panicked while being heckled by Code Pink in a room full of steak knives.

The experience was also pretty devastating for the restaurant, I should mention, which has since been bombarded with one-star Google and Yelp reviews mocking the president and his cabinet.

“Tried to go to the bathroom and some drunk challenged me to push-ups before swearing and running off to his phone about a bombing?” one reviewer wrote. “Hope it wasn’t the janitor. Pete was his name?”

“Unfortunately the establishment was filled with pedophiles last night,” wrote another.

Here are a couple I captured this afternoon, before Yelp had to temporarily disable reviews to protect Joe’s from financial ruin:

This all-around disaster of a publicity stunt, following weeks of National Guardsmen in D.C. having to spend their days spreading mulch around national monuments and picking up trash in order to avoid looking idle and useless on camera, becomes especially funny when you consider that Trump is desperate to coax Democratic governors to invite him to come “help” their cities in the same way.

“I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them,” Trump pleaded in a post on Monday. “Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), whose star is quickly rising in Democratic politics for this very reason, continues to tell Trump in no uncertain terms to stay the fuck out of Chicago. And it appears to be working pretty well to keep the troops away.

“They don’t want the president’s help. That’s on them,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News last night. “Chicago should be begging Donald Trump for help to keep Chicago safe, yet they aren’t. So, we’re going to a city who wants us there.”

Like a shark punched in the nose, this administration just slinks away in shame when any public figure is actually willing to stand up to it. And that should send a resounding message to all Democrats that there is absolutely no need, for any reason, to “compromise with” or “capitulate to” this deeply unpopular and weak wannabe dictator.

We’re all looking at you, Chuck.