Who Betrayed the Trump at Joe’s Seafood?

Trump’s botched “safe DC” stunt, the Epstein files, and why Marjorie Taylor Greene suddenly became a security threat

Donald Trump didn’t just call the Secret Service on Marjorie Taylor Greene. He leaked that he did, and the distinction is this entire story.

If this were actually about security, it would have stayed quiet. The Secret Service doesn’t conduct investigations by Axios scoop. They don’t launder concerns through photo illustrations and anonymous aides whispering about Rube Goldberg-type conspiracies. This was punishment.

The alleged crime? That Greene may have tipped off Code Pink protesters about Trump’s surprise September visit to Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, a lobbyist petri dish located a few blocks from the White House, where Trump arrived with the vice president, Cabinet members, and an entourage large enough to be spotted from space. Protesters got close, shouted “Trump is the Hitler of our time,” and the president visibly panicked. The video still circulates because it captures something rare: Trump unarmored, rigid, afraid.

Months later, long after the dinner and long after Greene had already fallen out of favor, Trumpworld decided the culprit must have been… Marjorie Taylor Greene. Not because there’s evidence, Axios is explicit that there is none. But because she recommended the restaurant, made calls confirming he was going (which Trump himself confirmed directly), didn’t show up that night, and, this is doing a lot of work, is friendly with Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin.

Code Pink, for its part, says the idea is so absurd it’s comical. Greene denies it flatly, repeatedly, and angrily, calling it a “dangerous lie.” And she is accidentally right about one thing that absolutely terrifies the White House: if protesters got that close, the failure belongs to the Secret Service and the people who planned the outing, not the former congresswoman who wasn’t even there.

The context Trumpworld would very much like you to forget is why he was at Joe’s Seafood in the first place. It was a promotional outing, a living, breathing press release. Trump was attempting to justify his use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., insisting that the city was now so safe under his watch that he could stroll into a fancy restaurant and dine like a king among the plebes.

The symbolism mattered. This was supposed to be the payoff shot: order restored, strongman vindicated, America reassured. Instead, what America got was protesters within feet of his table, chanting “Trump is the Hitler of our time,” while the president froze, visibly rattled, and was hustled out under the watchful eyes of cameras and smartphones.

That wasn’t just embarrassing, it torpedoed the premise of the entire stunt. If D.C. was so secure that the National Guard was justified, why did the president look like he’d just wandered into hostile territory? If order had been restored, why did a handful of anti-war activists manage to hijack the moment so completely?

And that is precisely why the White House flipped the script. Once the visit failed as propaganda, it had to be reclassified as sabotage. A security lapse becomes a conspiracy, and a former ally who later dared to defy him on Epstein becomes the most convenient suspect imaginable.

Seen through that lens, the Secret Service angle isn’t about safety at all — it’s about salvaging the narrative. Trump wasn’t undermined by poor planning or an overconfident show of force. He was undermined, the story now goes, by treachery from within. The failed photo op metastasizes into an internal purge, and embarrassment, once again, is alchemized into authoritarian paranoia. The city didn’t prove him wrong; someone set him up.

This isn’t really about Code Pink, or Joe’s Seafood, and it’s not even about Marjorie Taylor Greene, except as a convenient vessel. This is about Epstein, and the moment Greene stopped being useful to the silence machine.

Greene didn’t drift away quietly, she broke ranks at the worst possible time, and stood with Epstein survivors. She refused to take her name off the discharge petition, and forced the release of files Trump desperately wanted buried. For that, she was publicly branded a traitor by the man she spent six years defending for free.

It is not coincidence that two months later, Trumpworld suddenly rediscovered a restaurant protest from September and decided it was grounds to float a former ally as a potential security threat.

Trump didn’t need the Secret Service to investigate Greene, it’s an authoritarian reflex turned inward. What he needed was for the press to know he’d asked them to. He needed the implication out there, unproven but poisonous: that Marjorie Taylor Greene might be reckless with his safety. That she might be aligned with radicals and she can’t be trusted.

And the irony is almost too perfect to touch. Greene, who helped normalize loyalty purges, conspiratorial thinking, and the idea that enemies lurk everywhere, is now aghast to find herself treated exactly the same way. She built the political culture where evidence is optional and suspicion is power. She just didn’t think it would eat her.

Trump is being haunted by the growing realization that the Epstein story is not going away, and that the fractures it created inside his own coalition are widening. Former allies are talking, and the circle of unquestioning loyalty is shrinking.

So Trump does what he always does when cornered: he invents a threat, leaks it with purpose, and demands discipline through fear. This time, the target just happens to be Marjorie Taylor Greene.