A trio of Trump administration officials, thinking they were attending an easy celebratory event in Washington, instead encountered intense heckling and booing.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared visibly shaken before it was all over.
It happened Thursday morning at a D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force gathering that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.
The three were at Meridian Hill Park to thank National Guard troops for patrolling the nation’s capital since last fall. Also there? Protesters with the group “Free DC.”
Blanche, who replaced former Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi in March, tried to address the troops, but protesters’ noise interrupted his speech.
“Thank you, everybody. My name’s Todd Blanche, I’m the acting attorney general,” Blanche began as the heckling increased.
“So, on behalf of the United States Department of Justice, I want to tell every one of you men and women, from the bottom of my heart, thank you,” he said, trying to be heard above the noise
“It was just about one year ago today when President Trump said that he looked around this city, the capital of the greatest country in the history of civilization, and didn’t like what he saw,” a nervous Blanche continued as the yelling and shouting increased, giving way to anti-Trump chanting, according to Raw Story.
“He didn’t like the crime, he didn’t like the way it looked, and he instructed us to do something about it,” Blanche struggled on before adding, “And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
What he hasn’t done is release all the files from Jeffrey Epstein as mandated by law. He made the remarks to troops on the very day a judge ordered him to make public a series of secret files related to the dead sex trafficker.
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Hegseth and Miller also addressed troops at the event. But the protesters were so loud and rowdy that Hegseth couldn’t take it. He lashed out in anger, calling them “ingrates.”
“This background noise this morning is perfect; it’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them,” a furious defense chief railed, according to USA Today.
Social media just added to the trio’s troubles.
One poster took aim at Blanche, “A man destined to have his license to practice law snatched from him in the future.”
Others just piled on, calling out the unpopular Trump cronies.
This Threads user noted, “Protesters constantly heckling you is a sign that YOU are doing something very wrong.”
Another observed, “It must suck when you finally realize how much you’re disliked.”
An angry poster also proclaimed, “These motherf–kers should be mocked completely out of civilized society. They are a pariah. ALL OF THEM.”
It turns out the Justice Department responded to the judge’s order on releasing more Epstein files by the Thursday deadline.
Blanche defended the DOJ decision to withhold millions of additional files. He contended it would harm Epstein’s victims and the Trump administration. But he offered to share the files behind closed doors, according to USA Today.
The Justice Department is actually in contempt of Congress. Lawmakers passed a measure mandating the release of all the government’s investigative files on Epstein by December, 19, 2025. Trump signed the bill into law.
The deadline came and went. And still the DOJ is sitting on more than 2 million files it has refused to release.
