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posted by janrinok on Monday June 25 2018, @06:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the restaurant-with-bite dept.

BBC,

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant on Friday night because she works for President Donald Trump. A co-owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, asked Ms Sanders and her family to leave as a protest against the Trump administration.

She told the Washington Post that she decided to ask the Trump spokeswoman to leave the 26-seat, "farm-to-table" restaurant after talking to her staff. "Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave," she said she told them. "They said yes."

The incident comes days after Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was booed at a Mexican restaurant in Washington DC. Critics of the Red Hen's decision said that it was discriminatory. However, others compared the restaurant's decision to a recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, in a case seen by many conservatives as a test for religious freedom.

WaPo - the owner of the Red Hen explains

[...] She [Ms Wilkinson (the proprietor)] knew Lexington, population 7,000, had voted overwhelmingly against Trump in a county that voted overwhelmingly for him. She knew the community was deeply divided over such issues as Confederate flags. She knew, she said, that her restaurant and its half-dozen servers and cooks had managed to stay in business for 10 years by keeping politics off the menu.

[...] It was important to Wilkinson, she said, that Sanders had already been served — that her staff had not simply refused her on sight. And it was important to her that Sanders was a public official, not just a customer with whom she disagreed, many of whom were included in her regular clientele.

"They offered to pay," Wilkinson said. "I said, 'No. It's on the house.' "

See also: A(ustralian)BC news


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @09:22PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @09:22PM (#698397)

    It would be a bigger deal if it happened in DC, because you can't discriminate in DC based upon political affiliation.

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:17PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:17PM (#698765)

    Maybe, but it doesn't sound like the Red Hen refuses to serve other Republicans, so it'd be hard to make the case that they were discriminating based on political affiliation, rather than simply refusing to do business with someone who has voluntarily chosen to be an especially soulless, bald-faced liar aiding the current administration in perpetrating even its most heinous acts.