Hecklers targeted Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller this week during a visit to National Guard troops stationed in Washington, D.C.
The confrontation occurred on Wednesday, Aug. 20, when Vance, Hegseth, and Miller stopped at a Shake Shack inside Union Station to pick up hamburgers for the troops, ABC News reported.
As they entered the restaurant, protesters shouted slogans including “free D.C., free Palestine,” while onlookers and reporters gathered nearby.
“We hear these people outside screaming ‘Free D.C.’ Let’s free D.C. from lawlessness,” Vance told the troops in a video shared by the BBC.
“Let’s free Washington, D.C., so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free D.C. from,” he added.
Addressing the National Guard members, each official spoke over the ongoing background noise.
“We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital,” Miller said. “And let’s just also address one other thing: all of these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of this city and never have been.”
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced that he was seizing control of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying National Guard troops to reduce crime.
“Today we’re formally declaring a public safety emergency,” he said during a news conference on Monday, Aug. 11. “It’s embarrassing for me to be up here. I don’t like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once-beautiful capital was.”
Since the announcement, troops have flooded the city, leading to increased arrests. Protests have erupted over ICE checkpoints and expanded curfew zones for minors.
Amid the unrest, the administration’s social media accounts have showcased their operations. The official ICE account on X shared photos of officers stopping vehicles and making arrests, captioned, “When a city fails, we will answer the call.”
The Department of Defense also highlighted its presence, posting images of Humvees and armed guards patrolling the streets. Their post read, “President Trump activated the D.C. National Guard under Title 32 to assist Federal and Washington D.C. law enforcement within the nation’s capital. Safe to say: THE DOD HAS RESPONDED.”
This month, a resolution was introduced in Congress that could allow Trump to extend federal control of the police department beyond the initial 30-day period.
Vice President Vance later appeared on FOX News Channel’s The Ingraham Angle to discuss his visit to the National Guard troops, touching briefly on the protesters.
“I was talking with Stephen Miller and with Pete Hegseth about this in the Oval Office yesterday, and I was like, ‘You know, we should just go over there and say hello to people.’ And you’ve got a lot of national guardsmen over there, some D.C. cops who’ve been heckled by some of the protesters,” he said. “So I thought, what a good show of moral support, to have the vice president and some of the senior team at the White House show up, we bought them some burgers, hang out with them a little bit.”
