“I’ve have been a professional waiter in DC for the last 30 years. Today is the first time I was cut from my shift (of two waiters) during the popular restaurant week. People here are terrorized becauseof that POS in the White House Trump shits on EVERYTHING. He is a disaster for working Americans.”
Does anybody have a theory why Trump is being blamed for restaurant business declining in D.C.? There is no question that the extra presence of the National Guard makes the city safer for tourists, diners, visitors, residents. Is the drop in eatery reservations because those in the Greater D.C. area are watching, listening to and reading fear-mongering hysterics who are characterizing the cleaning up of the nation’s Capital, which has been a dangerous, crime-infested mess for decades, as some kind of apocalyptic institution of a police state?
Is it because restaurant patrons in D.C. are overwhelmingly white, and mostly don’t live in the District? How does an otherwise intelligent person (I know the Facebook poster) make the connection that President Trump is responsible for a restaurant laying him off? The likely culprits are the Axis media and the fools who won’t eat in D.C. because they are less likely to be robbed or murdered.
The downturn in D.C. restaurant business was a 2024 development, with rising costs being the major cause. Also, D.C. eliminated the tip credit that allowed restaurants to use tip income to reach the minimum wage requirements. Yet now it’s President Trump’s fault.
What’s going on here?
Ethics Alarms 
Learn to code.
Oh, Joel…THAT’S gonna leave a mark!
PWS
Apparently not the smooth path to a job that it once was — AI is taking over much of the work of entry level coding jobs. Maybe learn carpentry instead? If interest rates come down that should help the building trades.
H1Bs and outsourcing have taken over the entry level jobs. AI is a convenient scapegoat to distract attention from the real problem. Programmers mostly laugh at the AI when it comes to coding. It really isn’t all that much more useful than StackOverflow.
What restaurant of any size has only two waiters.
Heck, our local Subway has three people at any given time. It’s hard to imagine a sit-down restaurant with but two servers on a shift. A small cafe maybe without a lunch rush…?
Yes but the Subway staff are making sandwiches, not waiting on tables. With the “order using the QR code” technology that became popular during Covid, many restaurants have been able to cut down on wait staff while serving the same number of clientele.
“Yet now it’s President Trump’s fault.” Comes with the territory, right? I’m old enough to remember when everything was Biden’s fault, and remember the “thanks Obama!” meme? If you don’t want to blamed…including for things you didn’t cause and have no control over… don’t seek high office, or really, to be in charge of anything. When I was in High School everything we didn’t like was the Principal’s fault. Allegedly. Blaming the person in charge is not a novel development … if you can’t stand the heat….
Ah, yes! The old “A pox on both their houses” deflection. Isn’t “everybody does it” on the rationalization list?
That’s a poor comparison. There is, again, no precedent for the delusion that everything bad is Trump’s fault and everything that is going well is not to his credit. Can you give me an example of when Obama was widely blamed for conditions he had nothing to do with and no control over? We’re not discussing things like inflation, which is always blamed on a President, though in Joe Biden’s case it might have had some validity.
Let’s see, in the category of “nothing to do with and no control over”…. searching… searching…Haha here’s a fun one that absolutely fits those conditions! This story was published in 2014, during Obama’s second term.
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A Third Of Louisiana Republicans Blame Obama For Hurricane Katrina Response Under Bush
A large number of Louisiana Republicans think President Barack Obama is to blame for the federal government’s poor response to Hurricane Katrina, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday — despite the fact that the storm occurred three years before he took office.
Twenty-eight percent put the blame on President George W. Bush, whose administration did in fact oversee the federal response to Katrina.
———
Moral — sometimes, a president CAN avoid some of the blame for a disaster that happened on their watch– just blame on a past (or in this case a subsequent) president!
(Of course Obama WAS absolutely to blame for the scandal of wearing a tan suit! He should have known better than to copy Reagan’s style…)
That’s a good one!
The popular restaurant week?
What in the world is that?
Not sure if it’s the same thing but, here in Indianapolis, we have a couple of times a year called Devour Indy in which restaurants all over the city offer two or three prix fixe meals to allow new customers to try out their menus for a set price.
Isn’t the credit for the recent downturn in DC eateries due to the DOGE staffing cuts? I had been seeing occasional reports that the jobless claims in the tri-state area have skyrocketed in recent months, with the DOGE cuts largely to blame. If many former federal works are losing their jobs, they would be (I would assume) eating out less frequently while searching for a new job or packing up to relocate. Unless I’m mistaken, and unemployment pay is substantial enough you can still afford a $40 lunch every day?
DOGE = Trump! So, maybe they have a point? But then again, maybe we can’t all have nice things. Reducing Federal bloat is bound to have knock on effects.
One thing that I think tends to be glossed over is that political decisions will have both winners and losers. Dropping head count in the executive branch means thousands of people unemployed, at least for a time. Unemployment means less spending on luxury items. Those who sell luxury items then encounter a drop in demand, which hurts their bottom line. A win for the public overall – the reduced bloat in the federal government, and maybe a path towards fiscal solvency – means tightening belts, and maybe even closing, niche restaurants in DC and surrounds. So yes, it should be expected that there are business owners and wait staff who can directly link their woes to Trump’s policies.
The other thing that tends to be glossed over is what happens if the bloat and overspending continues unabated. Eventually the level of debt will downgrade the USA’s credit rating, which makes borrowing more expensive. Government has to borrow more to make payments, which increases inflation and increases debt, forcing the Government to borrow yet even more money (or worse, just print more). The downgrade of USA credit rating means fewer people willing to take the risk on USA debt, and other currencies start to gain viability as replacing the dollar as the reserve currency. If this continues too much longer, inflation spirals out of control, everyone loses the wealth they’ve been accumulating (because now your $1.2 million in your 401k can only buy a week’s worth of groceries), and everyone is forced into austerity measures.
Compared to that, the pain the service industry workers are feeling is mild, but their suffering is still real.
As always, Ryan, very well stated. You’re definitely one of the “dial a memo” leaders of the EA commentariat.
I read the comment as he was simply cut from his shift, not laid off.
I would assume business is currently slower because Congress is in recess?
It appears that “Trump ruined DC’s restaurant week” is the latest talking point for the privileged liberals in DC.
Peter Baker, NYT WH correspondent, posted a graph on X that purported to show how the deployment of the National Guard has adversely impacted fine dining in DC. Except that it didn’t. “Surprisingly,” Baker’s assertions were shown to be …er, incorrect.
Twitchy ran a post (including Baker’s post) that eviscerated the “journalist’s” claims:
https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2025/08/19/peter-baker-restaurant-week-comparison-wrong-n2417584