Restaurant debut in D.C. - Trump called "Hitler"

Washington - Donald Trump went only a few hundred yards out the door to project strength - and landed in the middle of dissent. The president left the White House on Tuesday night to dine at nearby Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab. It was meant to be visible proof that his federal crackdown in the capital is working. But barely had he entered the dining room when protesters outside the restaurant shouted: "Free D.C., Free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time.

Inside, the president posed for the press: "We are standing right in the middle of D.C. - one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now it is as safe as anywhere." Outside, that message bounced off chants. Trump was not alone. At the table with him: Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top West Wing officials. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt supplied the accompaniment: crab, shrimp, salad, steak, dessert - "phenomenal food, fantastic service." It was precisely this normalcy the administration wanted to picture: a city going out again, a president who goes "among the people." The context: a few weeks ago, Trump sent the National Guard to Washington - officially to reduce crime. Since then the White House has pointed to a high number of arrests and presented the move as a turning point. At the same time, critics note that crime had already been declining, a significant share of the arrests involve minor offenses, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington has had to downgrade or withdraw numerous cases for lack of indictments. There is a palpable gap between statistics and lived reality.

The evening became a magnifying glass for this gap. For Trump it was supposed to be a "victory lap" - a brief, confident appearance outside the tightly controlled rooms of the White House, which he has ventured more often lately: On Sunday the U.S. Open in New York, on Thursday the planned visit to the Yankees on the anniversary of September 11. But Washington is not Florida, not Bedminster, and not Mar-a-Lago. In the capital where he has always been unpopular, proximity to the city equals proximity to dissent. The place was symbolically charged as well. Joe’s, a classic with white tablecloths, stands for the normalcy Trump wants to claim: full tables, safe streets, "the city belongs to the patrons again." But normalcy cannot be decreed. Whoever asserts safety must pass the test of the public - and the public answered loudly that evening.

Politically, the appearance marks the line of this presidency: visibility, toughness, intervention. The deployment of the National Guard, the declaration of a crime emergency, the aggressive numbers storytelling - all of it is meant to create the impression that Washington has become a model student under federal supervision. The protests outside the restaurant, however, showed a counter-reality: a city that will not be reduced to a backdrop, and a citizenry that does not adopt government narratives without objection. In the end, a double image remains from this evening: inside the carefully arranged tableau of leadership, order, service; outside the chorus that challenges it all. Trump wanted to demonstrate with a short walk how far the capital has come under his direction. The reactions at the door made visible how far the path to redeeming this promise still is. "practically crime free" collides with "Trump is Hitler". Washington, this strange capital without a state, this eternal stage, delivered its verdict on this Tuesday evening. Loud, clear, unmistakable.