The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.
Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.
Trump announced the move on 11 August, claiming that Washington had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people”. His claims contradicted official statistics which show that violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low.
Data from Open Table shows that the number of people making online reservations dropped by 16% on Monday compared with the previous year. The number fell by 27% on Tuesday and 31% on Wednesday, as military vehicles and armed troops were deployed to the city.
Metropolitan Washington Summer Restaurant week in 2024 was from 12 to 18 August. The 2025 edition of the event, during which diners are generally offered premium experiences at more affordable prices than usual, began on Monday. The data did not immediately make clear to what extent that may have factored into the year-to-year drop.
On Friday, Democrats introduced a joint resolution to end what they described as “egregious attacks on DC home rule”, stating that Trump was overreaching in his actions in Washington.
The Democratic US congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued a statement saying Trump’s decision to send the military into the nation’s capital was meant to distract the public from the president’s “close friendship” with the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Raskin’s statement also alluded to broken promises from the Trump administration to fully divulge all files pertaining to the prosecutions of Epstein and his associate, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The only emergency here is a lawless president experiencing a growing public relations emergency because of his … stubborn refusal to release the Epstein file despite his promise to do so,” Raskin’s statement said.
Other Democrats echoed the sentiment that Trump’s move was an attempt to distract from criticism over Epstein and an economy that was struggling amid the passage of his congressional agenda bill, which included a historic $1tn cut to Medicaid.
“What’s happening here in Washington DC 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,” Chris Murphy, the US senator from Connecticut, told NBC on Sunday.
“He didn’t want to talk any more about the fact that our healthcare system is about to collapse because of the cuts that they have made, that premiums are going to go up by 75% on Americans. And so true to form, he just decided to create a new news cycle.”
Murphy added: “He’s just trying to distract from the stories he doesn’t want Americans to be talking about.”