WASHINGTON—Hundreds of protestors convened in DuPont Circle Saturday to denounce what they called President Donald Trump’s fascist takeover of Washington, D.C.
“What we see happening in front of us with a Trump fascist takeover of D.C. is launching to a whole other league of a Trump fascist takeover of society,” Sam Goldman, one of the event’s organizers, said at the opening rally.
These protestors are seething over Trump’s federalization of the metropolitan police and activation of the National Guard to quell the crime that the president has called “totally out of control.”
One of the rallying cries was against Trump’s use of law enforcement to remove homeless people from encampments in the streets, which the protest organizers have called a “Nazi Cleansing of The Homeless!”
When asked whether Trump had any reason to federalize the city’s police, one middle-aged man at the protest replied, “Abso-fu***ing-lutely not. Not a f***ing reason. The hypocrisy of it all.”
As the protest went on, an older gentleman sitting on a bench said a group that provides free meals to homeless people in DuPont Circle was forced to relocate across the street to accommodate the hundreds of demonstrators in the park. About a dozen homeless men and women gathered to receive meals there across the street from the protestors.
In the park, an elderly black woman rocked back and forth on a bench near the rally organizer’s stage. A group of young men sat as far from the noisy rally as they could, smoking joints or cigarettes.
DuPont Circle sits squarely on Connecticut Avenue, which runs right into the White House and falls on what is considered to be the “good side” of the nation’s capital. But it’s also where a well-known DOGE employee was recently beaten bloody by about 10 teenagers who wanted the staffer’s vehicle.
Despite events of that nature, the protestors who gathered over the weekend denied that D.C. had a crime problem.
As they gathered and began chanting, D.C. police officers assembled at the outskirts of the park on bicycles and in cruisers. Once the hundreds of protestors began filing down Connecticut Avenue towards the White House, the police ensured that none of the First Amendment fighters were mowed down by the city’s notoriously bad drivers.
One of the protestors shouted in the fray that she hated the police, a consistent rallying cry heard throughout the day. Another rally goer humorously commented, “But these ones” — the police escorting the demonstrators towards the White House — “are alright: they’re protesting with us.”
Days before the protest, the D.C. Police Union, which represents roughly 90% of the capital’s officers, endorsed Trump’s move to crack down on crime in the city. The union said it agrees “that crime is spiraling out of control, and immediate action is necessary to restore public safety.”
As the protestors marched down the city streets with the police escorting them and protecting their First Amendment, one man commented that “The rule of law is gone at this point because anything Trump does is against the law and he doesn’t care.”
The protesters themselves did not always match the seriousness of their rhetoric. One protester brandished a baguette, while another held a poster of Princess Leia holding a sub sandwich instead of a gun.
Both of these rally goers had apparently adopted the weapon of 37-year-old Sean Charles Dunn, a former Justice Department employee who slapped a federal agent across the chest with a sub sandwich while calling them “fascists” and yelling, “F*** you!”
In response to the video of the incident, Jeanine Pirro, who oversees the federal court for the D.C. area, said, “We’re going to back the police to the hilt, so there, stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else.”
The protestors took a route in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the Washington Monument, where a National Guard convoy was parked. The bicycle police had to restrain the protestors from accosting the guardsmen.
One woman, who lives in Warrenton, Virginia, and came into the city for the protest, said there was no crime problem in D.C. at all.
“I don’t live in D.C. — I live outside — but when I come in, I have never been frightened.
“There’s no emergency here,” the woman, who lives an hour outside D.C., told The Daily Wire. “It’s made up.”
Upon arriving at the White House fence, the protesters continued to shout and blow their whistles.
After the protest began to disband, this reporter went to find some water and had to step around a homeless man sleeping in front of a Peet’s Coffee across the street from the White House.
