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.
Vance entered Union Station’s Shake Shack to a mix of claps and boos, shaking hands and posing for photos with several people waiting to order lunch. As the boos grew louder, others in the crowd began chanting “USA, USA, USA” in response.
Blocked from the second floor of a Shake Shack in Union Station — where Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller were chatting with more 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 growing chorus of protesters — whose chants briefly drowned out his press gaggle — by calling them “crazy” and “communists.” Miller dismissed them as “elderly white hippies,” saying without evidence 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 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.”
When asked about the vice president’s presence, Jay Swanson, a customer eating a burger, said: “It’s disgusting, I lost my appetite.”
Vance 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.
Swanson offered 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 said, adding: “The resolute courage of the American people will win it.”
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.
When asked about the National Guard presence in the city, a college student doing homework at Union Station who asked not to be named said it was “overwhelming.”
“I thought I had read that the crime rate in DC is actually going down?” she said.
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.
As Vance wrapped up his lunch upstairs and descended back to the main floor, one man loudly booed. “I heard you buddy,” Vance said, attempting to brush off the moment.
“This is the guy who thinks people don’t deserve law and order in their own community,” he said to Hegseth, gesturing toward the man. Hegseth chuckled.
Outside the station, a second, smaller group of protesters gathered near parked National Guard tanks. As Vance departed, they continued to shout and wave signs.
“Criminals out of DC? Start with the Epstein files,” read one sign.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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