On Aug. 25, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that "half" of the restaurants in Washington, D.C., were closing and had only reopened because he had sent the National Guard into the city to crack down on crime. A number of posts responded by saying celebrity chef and restaurateur José Andrés called Trump's claim a "lie" and warned restaurants will close because of troops' presence and "federal agents harassing people."
Per the Occupy Democrats Facebook page:
Beloved celebrity chef José Andrés publicly embarrasses Donald Trump by exposing his absurd lie that D.C. restaurants are being closed due to an imaginary crime wave.
He really didn't pull any punches here…
"Mr. President @realdonaldtrump I understand why you are confused," Andres wrote on X.
"All your time in DC you haven't eaten ONCE outside the White House or your own hotel. I've lived here for 33 years, and it's a flat out lie that half the restaurants have closed because of safety," he went on."But restaurants will close because you have troops with guns and federal agents harassing people...making people afraid to go out," Andrés added.
Trump previously claimed that "half the restaurants" in the city are "closed" because "nobody could go, because they were afraid to go outside." He used the flagrant fabrication to support his deployment of the National Guard to the city.
"Now those restaurants are opening and new restaurants are opening up. It's like a boom town," Trump lied.
Trump's deployment of thousands of heavily armed National Guard troops to the nation's capital has terrorized the inhabitants of the city for the sole purpose of allowing the convicted felon to play-act as a "law and order president." In reality, the city's violent crime rates recently hit a 30 year low.
(Facebook page "Occupy Democrats")
Andrés did indeed criticize Trump on X for his claims about crime in Washington, D.C. The above quote is authentic. As such we rate it as a correct attribution.
Andrés responded on his verified X account. While reposting a clip of Trump's statement, Andrés wrote:
Mr. President @realdonaldtrump I understand why you are confused...all your time in DC you haven't eaten ONCE outside the White House or your own hotel. I've lived here for 33 years, and it's a flat out lie that half the restaurants have closed because of safety...but restaurants will close because you have troops with guns and federal agents harassing people...making people afraid to go out.
Cities and towns and rural areas of America need policies that allow small business to thrive and all people including immigrants to live and work with dignity. People shouldn't be afraid of their government...government should have respect for its people, not terrorize them.
On Aug. 11, Trump announced a "crime emergency" in Washington, D.C., and deployed the National Guard. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected Trump's claims, acknowledging there was a spike in crime in 2023 but stressed there was no current crime wave in the city.
News reports from D.C. a week before his post appeared to corroborate Andrés' account of the state of restaurants. According to local magazine Washingtonian, some restaurant operators saw no boom in customers, instead reporting that their own employees were afraid to come to work because of fears of being arrested by federal agents. Since Aug. 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested over 300 people in D.C. who they say don't have legal immigration status, according to the Trump administration. Many D.C. restaurant workers have uncertain immigration statuses.
Restaurateurs said even workers with legal immigration statuses feared coming to work because of concerns they would be racially profiled by ICE agents. Others reported difficulties making food deliveries because so many delivery drivers were South American and were being targeted by ICE agents. Customers speaking to NBC News also reported witnessing immigrant delivery drivers being detained by federal agents. Out of concern for the drivers' safety, some of these customers stopped using delivery apps.
Restaurateurs speaking to The New York Times and WUSA9 said D.C. became a "ghost town" after Trump's crime crackdown announcement, with customer numbers dropping in the month of August. However, some restaurateurs said the crackdown on crime was "necessary."
Shawn Townsend, president of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), said August was normally a slow period for businesses, but after Trump announced a surge in federal law enforcement in the city, reservations dropped considerably.
"That week after President Trump announced, reservations were down in restaurants pretty significantly," he told local journalists. As a result, he announced Summer Restaurant Week — when hundreds of restaurants offer three-course meals at set prices — had been extended by another week until Aug. 31, to give restaurants "an additional lifeline and additional boost that they so desperately need in the month of August."
However, Townsend also noted: "I think it's a combination of a little bit of everything. [...] I don't want to blame it all on, you know, public safety or the presence of federal agents on our corners, although we do think that it's a deterrence. And, you know, I think we're feeling it because of that. But also, we see this drop in reservations every year around this time."
Per The New York Times' Aug. 23 report, data from the online reservation platform OpenTable showed a 24% dip in reservations for 2025's Summer Restaurant Week compared with 2024. However, by Aug. 26, RAMW said it saw a 29% year-over-year increase in reservations.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson posted on X that the drop in restaurant reservations was due to a change in the annual event's start date (in 2024 it started on Aug. 12, while in 2025 started on Aug. 18), and that blaming it on the federal takeover was "fake news."
We have previously examined violent crime rates in D.C. and found that, contrary to Trump's claims, in 2024 they reached a 30-year low.