Vance’s Trip For Burgers Crashes Into Trump’s Dc Takeover

A vice president, defense secretary and top White House aide walk into a burger joint.

Let the chaos ensue.

Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Wednesday paid an unannounced visit to the National Guard troops stationed at Union Station, the major regional train station in the nation’s capital. From a second-floor Shake Shack, Vance thanked the soldiers for “actually keeping this place safe.”

“You guys bust your ass all day. We give you hamburgers. Not a fair trade, but we're grateful for everything you guys do,” the vice president said. His staffers presented them with boxes of burgers.

The remarks were hard to hear, however, because of what was happening down below.

As three of the most powerful men in the world attempted to seize yet another media moment broadcasting the White House’s crackdown on crime in Washington, protesters in the station drowned them out. Shouts of “Free D.C.,” echoed throughout the historic train hall.

The extraordinary scene was evocative of the greater tensions between Washington and the White House, as President Donald Trump exerts unprecedented control over the deep-blue city. Since the president launched a takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department, deployed federal law enforcement from agencies like ICE and the FBI and sent in National Guard troops nine days ago, the District has had little choice but to comply with a crackdown — based predominantly on the president’s whims — while tackling the uncomfortable political realities of crime here.

“You hear these people out here screaming ‘Free D.C.,” Vance said. “Let’s free D.C. from lawlessness. Let's free Washington, D.C., from one of the highest murder rates in the entire world. Let's free Washington, D.C., so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That's what we're trying to free D.C. from.”

Vance and Miller — who have both been publicly critical of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and the broader racial justice movement — cast the protesters in racial terms, calling them out for being white and not having a true understanding of crime in the city.

“It's kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they've never felt danger in their entire lives,” Vance said.

Although troops and law enforcement have been highly visible in the city’s tourist hotspots — which are generally high-traffic, low-crime areas — the White House says enforcement crackdowns are concentrated in Wards 7 and 8, which are majority-Black and have the highest crime rate in the city. POLITICO could not independently confirm the White House's analysis of where arrests are concentrated.

“We're going to ignore these stupid white hippies,” Miller said. “They all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old, and we're going to get back to business protecting the American people.”

Miller called the protesters “crazy communists” who “have no connection to this city.” He promised to add “thousands more resources to this city to get criminals and the gang members out of here.”

Trump nine days ago invoked a provision of the Home Rule Act, the 1970s law that grants limited self-governance to the District, to demand the services of the Metropolitan Police Department to assist the federal government during “special conditions of an emergency nature.” But Trump and his administration have cast his move in much more dire terms, suggesting it was a full-fledged federal takeover of the city’s police.

An attempt by the administration to name the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration the city’s “emergency police commissioner” prompted fury from city officials, a move the administration walked back last week in an agreement with D.C. at the urging of a federal judge.

Trump only has the authority to take federal control of the MPD for 30 days without congressional approval, but has suggested he wants to circumvent that. Asked if the White House would try to extend the takeover beyond that timeline, Vance said: “If the president of the United States thinks that he has to extend this order to ensure that people have access to public safety, then that's exactly what he'll do.”

A supermajority of the city’s residents oppose Trump controlling law enforcement in the city, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Wednesday.

But Vance said he was “highly skeptical” of that poll. “I don't know what poll you're talking about, maybe the same poll that said Kamala Harris would win the popular vote by 10 points,” he quipped.

That response, too, is indicative of the broader White House playbook behind the crime crackdown: Lean on what people see and how they feel, and when the numbers don’t align with the vibes, call the numbers into question. District police data, for example, has violent crime in Washington at a 30-year low. But the White House claims the MPD “cooked the books” and the Justice Department is now probing whether those statistics were manipulated, multiple outlets reported Tuesday.

Vance on Wednesday said “crime statistics all over our country were massively underreported.” Asked what evidence he had that the MPD statistics had been manipulated, Vance said “you just have to look around,” adding that statistics from the Justice Department and FBI “back it up.”

It was not clear what statistics he was referring to.