JD Vance brushes off boos, insults as he hands out burgers to troops in D.C. – National
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U.S. Vice-President JD Vance was greeted by a wave of boos and heckles as he arrived at an event for National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Vance, who was tasked with handing out Shake Shack burgers to military personnel at Union Station in the country’s capital, brushed off chants like “Free D.C.,” and “You’re an embarrassment to Ohio,” his home state.
Crowds also yelled expletives at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, both of whom were accompanying Vance.
One onlooker can be heard shouting, “F–k you, Pete, f–king Nazi.”
“Get out of my city,” another person yelled.
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (2nd L) and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller (L), speaks with members of the National Guard during a visit to Union Station on Aug. 20, 2025.
Al Drago / Getty Images
In a post on X on Thursday, Vance wrote “Make DC Safe Again,” having told troops the previous day, “We appreciate everything you’re doing … you guys bust your asses all day, we give you a hamburger, not a fair trade but we’re grateful for everything you guys do.”
As protesters chanted outside, Vance told reporters, “We don’t have to live like this. We do not have to allow our cities to be taken over by violence and by disorder and by chaos. You can actually do stuff, you can actually bring law and order to communities, you’ve just got to have the political willpower to do it.”
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Miller condemned the protesters who had gathered, calling them “crazy communists” with “no roots and no connections to the city.”
According to The Guardian, Vance claimed Washington, D.C., had become plagued by “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill,” posing a threat to public safety, and claimed it was “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.”
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump took control of the city’s police department and ordered Hegseth to deploy National Guard troops to patrol the streets, claiming they had been taken over by criminals and people experiencing homelessness, despite the city’s crime rate hitting a 30-year low, according to official records.
“We’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said, adding he’d be “getting rid of the slums.”
It’s estimated that some 1,900 troops have been deployed in D.C., with more than half coming from Louisiana and South Carolina.
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