By WILL WEISSERT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is having dinner Tuesday evening at a seafood restaurant close to the White Home, selling his deployment of the Nationwide Guard and federalizing the police pressure in an effort to crack down on crime within the nation’s capital.
His motorcade rushing the quick distance to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab on fifteenth Avenue within the northwestern quadrant of town follows weeks of the president boasting about mobilizing federal authorities and the army that he says have made Washington “a secure zone.”
Some eating places have reported drops in reservations since Trump first introduced the federal crackdown on Aug. 7, whereas there have been frequent road protests decrying his actions. Elevated army and police presence additionally has often sparked standoffs between residents and authorities in usually quiet neighborhoods.
Trump has nonetheless mentioned repeatedly that he’s spoken to pals who inform him native eating places are full and that folks have seen a drop in crime. He says he’s additionally heard that folks respect crews working to take away homeless encampments as a part of the crackdown.
The president had recommended beforehand that he may be heading out to dinner for a firsthand look.
“I feel it’s one thing we may think about doing. Like to do it,” Trump instructed reporters final week within the Oval Workplace when requested about venturing out to dinner past the White Home. “I really like the White Home meals, however after some time, I may see going to a pleasant restaurant. It’s secure.”
Trump not often dines away from the White Home when he’s in Washington. And people outings have gotten even much less frequent since he bought the lodge bearing his identify a number of blocks away, which was a key assembly level for administration officers and supporters throughout his first time period.
The White Home reported Tuesday that there had been almost 2,200 arrests since Trump first introduced the Washington crackdown on Aug. 7.
Along with Washington, Trump deployed the Nationwide Guard to Los Angeles in June and has threatened to ship troops to different, largely Democratic cities, together with Baltimore, New Orleans and Chicago — the place state and native authorities already are bracing for operations to sharply improve immigration enforcement.
On Saturday, Trump posted a parody picture from “Apocalypse Now” that includes a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the lakefront and skyline of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest metropolis.
“‘I really like the odor of deportations within the morning,’” Trump wrote on his social media website. “Chicago about to seek out out why it’s known as the Division of WAR.”
Within the publish, Trump supplied no particulars past the label “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the title of Francis Ford Coppola’s dystopian 1979 movie set within the Vietnam Battle, by which a personality says: “I really like the odor of napalm within the morning.”
That publish got here after final week, when Trump signed an govt order searching for to rename the Protection Division because the Division of Battle — even after months of campaigning to be thought of for the Nobel Peace Prize. The renaming requires congressional approval.
In his personal publish in response, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker known as Trump a “wannabe dictator.” He has joined state and metropolis officers — and plenty of Chicago residents — in decrying the concept of a federal crackdown as pointless.
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