Watch | ‘Hitler of our time’: Trump jeered by protesters as he dines at restaurant near White House
Secret Service agents then escorted the protesters, who waved Palestinian flags, out of the restaurant as other diners booed or chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Donald Trump's dinner with his aides doubled as a public relations move. (File)
US President Donald Trump was heckled by protesters shouting “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!” as he dined at a Washington restaurant on Tuesday evening, videos circulating online showed.
The US President briefly approached the demonstrators inside Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak + Stone Crab, just blocks from the White House. He paused a few feet away, nodding and smiling before gesturing for them to be cleared out, saying: “come on, let’s go.” Secret Service agents then escorted the protesters, who waved Palestinian flags, out of the restaurant as other diners booed or chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
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The protest was claimed by Code Pink, a feminist activist group. “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,” the group posted 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.
Two years into genocide, Gaza is under evacuation orders, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are in… pic.twitter.com/546qb1s1MO
Trump, who rarely eats out in public, was joined by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and others. Leavitt later confirmed that the group “enjoyed crab, shrimp, salad, steak and dessert.”
The dinner doubled as a public relations move, with Trump promoting his controversial deployment of the national guard and federal takeover of policing in the capital. “We’re standing right in the middle of DC, which as you know about, over the last year, was a very unsafe place – over the last 20 years – and now it’s got virtually no crime,” he told reporters, as reported by The Guardian. “I would not have stood out in the middle of the street a couple of months ago.”
While Trump credited his security crackdown for making Washington “a safe zone,” critics note that crime was already at a 30-year low when he sent in thousands of troops. A Reuters analysis found federal agents have disproportionately targeted low-level offences such as marijuana use and public drinking, while grand juries have rejected an unusually high number of serious gun and drug cases for lack of evidence.
The incident followed weeks of pro-Palestine protests across US cities over the administration’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. In August, Vance himself was heckled while handing out hamburgers to national guard troops, with one man calling him a “Nazi.”
Donald Trump's dinner with his aides doubled as a public relations move. (File) 
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