Trump’s Interior Secretary Repeats Weird D.C. Restaurant Claim

The Trump administration is apparently intent on lying about the impact of the president’s military occupation of D.C. on local restaurants.

While some data suggests the federal takeover may be scaring away diners, the Trump team keeps insisting that the very opposite is happening.

Appearing on Fox Business Wednesday morning, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum touted Trump’s crackdown, which is strongly opposed by most D.C. residents.

Burgum cited alleged decreases in carjackings and robberies—apparently, week-over-week percent decreases reported by D.C.’s police union, from which little can actually be concluded (in part because, as one conservative commentator observed, “robbery and property crime reports often lag the date of the incident by a week or more, making any short-term comparison like this liable to look more favorable than is true of the situation on the ground”).

Burgum also said restaurant reservations are “up 30 percent,” in a “dramatic change.” Here, the interior secretary was echoing Trump’s baseless claim earlier this week that restaurants are “busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

As D.C.’s local Fox station reports, restaurant attendance was down each day during the first week of Trump’s crackdown on the capital compared with the same week last year. The most significant plunge took place last Wednesday, when reservation numbers fell by 31 percent.

Conveniently overlooking these facts, Burgum seemingly narrowed in on data from Monday, which saw a 29 percent year-over-year increase in reservations made via the online service OpenTable.

However, this increase took place on the first day of the city’s summer Restaurant Week, during which local eateries offer promotional deals. Restaurant Week 2024 took place a week earlier, also potentially affecting last week’s numbers.

Reservation data aside, The Washington Post reports that Trump’s actions in D.C. have sent restaurant owners reeling.

One said that “reservations are low, low, low,” and, “The city is dead.”

Another, who said this month is on track to be the slowest August in his restaurant’s seven-year history (peak pandemic years included), told the Post that “seeing law enforcement—armored and plainclothed—in the neighborhood, casing our building and looking into our windows, definitely put guests and staff on edge.”

Donald Trump’s energy policy is already raising prices for consumers—and his administration is desperate for someone to blame. 

“Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA.”

But clearly, the days of stupidity are far from over. A new report from Climate Power found that energy price increases spurred by Trump’s behemoth budget bill are already beginning to take root, The Guardian reported Tuesday.  

Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Climate Power found that household gas prices had skyrocketed 56 percent from January to May 2025. 

The group also found that the average price of household energy had increased by roughly 10 percent during the same period, from 15.95 cents per kWh to 17.47 cents per kWh. Electricity prices were six percent higher in May than the same month the previous year. 

Climate Power senior adviser Jesse Lee accused Republicans of inflicting a “massive utility bill hike” on their constituents. “This is nothing short of a betrayal of their own voters. Families are losing jobs while their bills climb, all because Republicans would rather protect their donors than lower costs,” Lee told The Guardian.

Energy Innovation, a climate think tank, published a report in July that estimated Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill,” which repealed tax credits for solar and wind energy installed under the Biden administration, might raise wholesale electricity prices by 74 percent by 2035. Shortly after the law passed, Trump issued an executive order to ensure an end to “market distorting subsidies” for green energy projects.

In an interview for Politico, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright preempted the Trump administration getting blamed for the rising energy prices, and blamed Democrats for the cost increases. “The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told Politico. “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”

In response to The Guardian’s report, Department of Energy spokesperson Ben Dietderich said: “While radical activist groups might still be trying to peddle nonsense, the American people elected President Trump to restore commonsense energy policies and that is exactly what we are doing.”

“Other than higher energy prices and a less reliable grid more prone to blackouts, there is very little to show for the previous administration’s reckless green new scam spending that cost hundreds of billions of dollars,” he added. 

Dietderich also claimed that in 2024, the U.S. got only three3 percent of its energy from renewable sources. But a special report from global energy think tank Ember found that wind and solar energy accounted for a record 17 percent of electricity in the U.S. in 2024, overtaking coal for the first time, which only accounted for 15 percent. In 2023, the U.S. got 21.4 percent of its energy from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

A new poll from The Washington Post shows that Washington, D.C., residents are overwhelmingly against the deployment of federal agents and national guardsmen in their streets.

The Post’s random sampling of 604 adult D.C. residents showed that 79 percent of them either somewhat opposed or strongly opposed, “Trump ordering the federal government to take control of Washington, D.C.’s police department and ordering the National Guard and FBI to patrol D.C.”

When asked, “How much, if at all, do you think the D.C. police should help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants who live in D.C.?” almost 60 percent of respondents replied, “Not at all,” and over half thought Mayor Muriel Bowser should do more to oppose the president.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents stated that they feel “very safe” or “somewhat safe” in their communities, up two percent from this May. The percentage of respondents who said that crime was an “extremely/very serious” issue in the District also fell significantly, from 50 percent to 31 percent. About 40 percent of August respondents stated that crime was a “moderately serious” issue.

The poll also shows that support for D.C. statehood is at its highest since 1995.

While these numbers give us insight into what just a portion of the city’s more than 700,000 residents are thinking, it’s clear that President Trump’s federal takeover has not had the desired effect.

It turns out that having masked Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, and other agents setting up checkpoints, harassing people for smoking weed, and pulling delivery drivers off of their scooters mid-route does not actually make D.C. residents feel safer.

“Trump’s overheated rhetoric about D.C. crime has evoked strong feelings among many residents offended by such characterizations of their city,” Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told the Post. “A federalized takeover of any aspect of a city’s operations will naturally create a backlash, and that is clearly happening here,” he said.

Republican lawmakers are apparently consorting with the dead in their search for a justifiable reason to nix mail-in ballots.

Speaking with Fox Business Tuesday, Representative Jeff Van Drew claimed that he had spoken with “large numbers” of deceased people who had received the voter ballots.

“There were multiple mail-in ballots sent to the same person. Sometimes people would have multiple ballots sent to different addresses,” Van Drew said.

“Other times, people who are passed away—these are real people I spoke to, large numbers of them, and it’s indicative of what happened around the country,” the New Jersey lawmaker claimed.

Since he lost the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies have obsessed over contrived claims of voter fraud—a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in September that just 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Critics argue that restrictions on the front end of the electoral process—such as one-day voting and requiring day-of voter ID, which Trump has tried but failed to implement—would minimize voter turnout and limit American democracy’s ability to represent its constituents. This would especially be true in high-density areas like the nation’s biggest cities, where those stipulations would significantly drain resources (i.e., the number of volunteers required) and require more time to process, potentially leading to more delays, which Republicans could weaponize to further restrict voter access.

The MAGA party’s continued focus on the nativist nonissue belies the fact that it is, of course, already illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Attacking mail-in voting has not proved popular for Republican lawmakers, however. A heated exchange over the tool at a Casper, Wyoming, town hall Monday resulted in an irate crowd practically screaming at Representative Harriet Hageman, who claimed that mail-in ballots are not “foundational tools” of democratic elections.

President Donald Trump is notoriously incapable of taking even petty criticisms in stride. The White House’s latest spat with the White Stripes’ Jack White does little to change that perception.

On Tuesday, White posted a photo on Instagram of President Trump sitting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office. Panning the president’s dictator-chic design choices, White wrote in his caption that the White House is “now a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room. Can’t wait for the UFC match on the front lawn too.”

White continued, writing, “Look at his disgusting taste, would you even buy a used car from this conman, let alone give him the nuclear codes? A gold plated trump bible would look perfect up on that mantle with a pair of trump shoes on either side wouldn’t it? What an embarrassment to American history.”

The musician also praised Zelenskiy. “Also pictured in this photograph, a REAL leader of a nation in a black suit,” wrote White, who has called Trump an “obvious fascist” and filed (but subsequently dropped) a lawsuit against his 2024 campaign for unauthorized use of the song “Seven Nation Army.”

In a statement sent to several media outlets, Steven Cheung, the famously hot-tempered Trump senior staffer, railed against White for his post.

“Jack White is a washed up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” wrote Cheung. “It’s apparent he’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’”

But if White’s post reveals that he has “ample time” on his hands, can’t the same be said about the White House for its reply?

This isn’t the first time Trump’s communications staff has deepened the impression of the president as thin-skinned. When the Comedy Central cartoon South Park featured a withering portrayal of Trump, the White House then too put together a statement defending the president’s honor. “This show,” it said, “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”