A throng of protesters chanted slogans as Vice President JD Vance thanked National Guard and police at Union Station in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.
Vance praised law enforcement and said that violent crime had dropped by 35% in the nine days since President Donald Trump ordered the crackdown. The vice president appeared alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, each of whom remarked on the shouting protesters.
Over the past several years, Vance described Union Station as having vagrants, drug addicts, ‘chronically homeless’ people and the mentally ill threatening violence and attacking families in the public transportation hub.
‘I think you hear these guys outside here screaming at us. Of course, these are a bunch of crazy protesters. But I’ll tell you, a couple of years ago, when I brought my kids here, they were screamed at by violent vagrants. And it scared the hell out of my kids,’ Vance said.
‘I know that we’ve traded now, some violent, crazy people who are screaming at kids with a few crazy liberals who are screaming at the vice president. But I think that’s a very worthwhile trade to make, because we want our people to be able to enjoy our beautiful cities,’ Vance continued. ‘This is your city. You should feel free to come and visit here.’
Vance also clashed with a reporter who asked if he had evidence of Washington’s crime problem.
‘You just have to look around – obviously D.C. has a terrible crime problem,’ he said, pointing to how Department of Justice and FBI statistics ‘back it up.’
‘Just talk to a resident of this city, this beautiful, great American city,’ Vance said. ‘We hear these people outside screaming ‘Free D.C.’ Let’s free D.C. from lawlessness.’
‘It is kind of bizarre we have a bunch of old, primarily White people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they have never felt danger in their entire lives,’ the vice president added.
Miller was even more blunt, describing many of the protesters as ‘elderly’ and ‘over 90 years old.’
‘We’re not going to let communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital,’ Miller said, deriding the protesters as ‘stupid White hippies.’
‘For too long, 99% of this city has been terrorized by 1% of this city,’ Miller said. ‘And the voices that you hear out there, these crazy communists, they have no connection to the city. They have no families. They weren’t raised in this city. They have no one that they’re sending to school in this city. They have no jobs in this city. They have no connections to this community at all. They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for the 1%. The criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.’
The Trump administration’s crackdown on violent crime in D.C. has already netted hundreds of arrests. The show of force has swept up gang members, robbery suspects and immigration violators. On Friday alone, 52 people were arrested, including 28 illegal immigrants, while three guns were seized.
Federal teams have also cleared dozens of homeless encampments, and officials said those removals were carried out without confrontations or arrests.
The operation began quietly on Aug. 7 with the launch of the ‘Making D.C. Safe and Beautiful’ task force created by Trump in March through an executive order.
He escalated it on Aug. 11 by temporarily seizing federal control of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under emergency powers in the Home Rule Act, the first such move in U.S. history.
Fox News’ Michael Dorgan contributed to this report