WASHINGTON – A Virginia restaurant was inundated with reviews from bothends of the political spectrum Saturday after White House press secretarySarah Sanders said its owner asked her to leave because of her job.
On Friday, a Facebook user claiming to be a waiter at The Red Hen inLexington, Virginia — around 70 miles southwest of Charlottesville — saidhe served Sanders “for a total of 2 minutes” before she and her party wereasked to leave.
His post went viral when Brennan Gilmore, a musician, activist and formerUS diplomat, uploaded a screenshot to Twitter alongside an image of ahandwritten note which read “86 – Sara Huckabee Sanders,” supposedly fromthe restaurant.
To “86” someone is a slang term meaning to refuse to serve a customer.
“Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leavebecause I work for POTUS and I politely left,” Sanders tweeted on Saturday,confirming the incident.
“Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best totreat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and willcontinue to do so.”
Chef-owner Stephanie Wilkinson said that politics were especially explosivein her small town which voted against Trump in a county that did not.
Given her own moral position that the spokeswoman serves in an “inhumaneand unethical” administration, Wilkinson told The Washington Post, shecould not accept a defender of the president’s “cruelest policies.”
*’Not a fan of confrontation’*
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said.
“I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like themoment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions anddecisions to uphold their morals,” she stressed.The owner said many of heremployees were gay and that Sanders had defended Trump’s wish to bartransgender people from the armed forces. And then, she said, she wasstunned by the spokeswoman’s defense of Trump policies leading to migrantchildren being taken from their parents’ care.
“I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it hasto uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” the ownerexplained.
“I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.'”
The restaurant continued to be flooded Saturday afternoon with five-staronline reviews praising the restaurant’s stance — and one-star reviewsaccusing the owner of “discrimination.”
“Sarah, you’re a class act. I’m so sorry you were treated this way,” wasState Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert’s response on Twitter.
It comes after US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen washeckled as she dined at a Mexican restaurant in Washington on Tuesday.
Protestors chanted “shame! shame!” repeatedly at Nielsen, a frontlinedefender of the Trump administration’s practice of separating migrantchildren from their parents, until she left the restaurant.
Two days earlier, according to the New York Post, White House adviserStephen Miller was branded a “fascist” while dining at another Mexicaneatery in Washington. – APP/AFP