Restaurant attendance in the nation’s capital has taken a dive in the wake of President Trump’s Washington, D.C., crackdown on crime, according to data from OpenTable.
Last Monday, Trump announced he was taking federal control of D.C.’s police department and deploying the National Guard in the city in an effort to fight crime.
Beginning that Monday, seated diners at Washington restaurants, according to online reservation numbers, started to drop dramatically in comparison to the prior year, dipping 16 percent. On Wednesday, the amount of seated diners at restaurants with reservations fell 31 percent, slightly recovering to down by 20 percent on Saturday.
WUSA was the first to report on the D.C. OpenTable data.
D.C. residents have expressed their outrage toward the president’s recent actions in their city via protests. On Wednesday, federal law enforcement officers were heckled in a relatively busy area in Washington’s northwestern quadrant.
Trump’s crime crackdown has also reignited calls for D.C. statehood, with the District also not having its own voting member of Congress.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Sunday that authorities arrested 68 people overnight in D.C.
“Over 300 arrests in D.C. — and counting: Just last night, our federal and DC law enforcement partners made 68 arrests and seized 15 illegal firearms,” Bondi said in a post on the social platform X. ”Homicide suspects, drug traffickers, and more are being charged. I’ll continue to stand with you as we make DC safe again!”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday dismissed Trump’s recent crackdown on the nation’s capitol as a “stunt.”
“What’s happening here in Washington, D.C., is just a stunt. Donald Trump didn’t like the fact that the walls were closing in on him, that his own base was questioning why he wouldn’t release the Epstein files, why he was protecting very powerful people,” Murphy told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”
