Prominent MAGA figures expressed fury at the Secret Service for a major security failure after a protest group heckled Donald Trump to his face on a visit to an upscale seafood restaurant near the White House.
Trump, joined by top Cabinet members including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, visited Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab on Tuesday to show the capital is now safer after his decision to deploy National Guard officers in D.C.
The visit was quickly interrupted by members of the Code Pink activist group, who shouted “Free D.C! Free Palestine!” and “Trump is the Hitler of our time!” while the president stared at them from just feet away.
Trump loyalists have since questioned why the Secret Service allowed protesters to get so close to Trump, and why agents appeared slow to react to the disruption.
Wednesday is the final day that the president has control over local police officers with a 30-day emergency order set to lapse at midnight. The deployment of National Guard troops from eight Republican states is expected to continue, however, with no sign that Trump will release his grip on the city and send the guards home.
The MAGA-backing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna even questioned if the Secret Service had revealed where the president would be dining on Tuesday evening to Code Pink.
“How are they allowed that close to him? Where was Secret Service and was there someone in Secret Service that leaked his location? This needs to be looked into,” Luna posted on X.
Pro-Trump podcaster Graham Allen added: “H,w did Code Pink get so close to our president? How did Code Pink know he would be there? This was NOT a public event. Why were they able to SHOUT and YELL at the president for so long?!?”
Far-right activist Laura Loomer—who has become the Grim Reaper of the MAGA movement for her targeting of officials—suggested the incident was so dangerous that House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is behind Vance in the presidential order of succession, could have ended up as president.
“Someone at Secret Service needs to be fired for this one. Is there a HAMAS sympathizer working at the U.S. Secret Service? Who let those rabid HAMAS lovers inside while Trump was in the restaurant? We need to find out and expose them,” Loomer posted.
“This is unacceptable. POTUS could have been assassinated tonight. They could have stabbed him or shot him.”
It was Trump’s first dinner out in D.C. as president, except at his own hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Code Pink’s D.C. organizer, Olivia DiNucci, told the Daily Beast the group simply reserved a table “pretty last-minute” at the swanky restaurant, where king crab claws can set you back nearly $160, in order to confront Trump.
“We thought it was just going to be Trump, we didn’t know that it was all of his Cabinet, and we didn’t think they would be in such an open room—we thought he’d be in a different area—and we were placed really close to them,” DiNucci said.
The Secret Service was widely condemned for the security failures that allowed a gunman to climb onto a roof and open fire at Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, which left the then-78-year-old candidate with a minor injury to his ear.
The White House and the Secret Service have been contacted for comment by the Daily Beast.
