Trump visits DC police and federal officers working on crackdown

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump met Thursday evening with local police, National Guard troops and members of several federal agencies involved in his crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C., trumpeting what he described as the successes of the operation and promising more to come.

“Right now, it’s better than it has been in years, and in a couple of weeks it’s going to be even far better than that,” Trump said, speaking from the U.S. Park Police’s Anacostia Operations Facility, in the southeastern part of the nation’s capital.

“Everybody’s safe now,” he added. “Everybody feels safe.”

Trump brought pizza and hamburgers to the assembled law enforcement personnel before returning to the White House after about half an hour. He did not accompany any of the law enforcement personnel on patrols of the city, despite having suggested to a conservative talk-radio host earlier in the day that he would. “I’m going to be going out tonight, I think with the police, and with the military of course,” he said during the interview with Todd Starnes, adding, “We’re going to do a job.”

Federal law enforcement units, including National Guard members from several states, have come into the city since Trump declared a public safety emergency last week, allowing him to enlist the city’s police in a Justice Department-led effort to combat crime.

The crowd that assembled for the president’s remarks Thursday evening included officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the FBI, as well as the National Guard and the city’s municipal police force, the Metropolitan Police, according to a pool report.

Trump’s excursion comes a day after Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff who is a key adviser on domestic policy, visited National Guard troops posted to Union Station — and pledged even more of a crackdown. Their stop at a restaurant in the Beaux-Arts transit hub drew boos, epithets and insults from protesters.

Trump avoided similar protests Thursday by meeting with law enforcement personnel at a closed federal facility.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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