TRUMP AIDE ASKED TO LEAVE VIRGINIA RESTAUR A NT.
WASHINGTON • White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was booted from a Virginia restaurant because she works for President Donald Trump, setting off a fierce debate about whether politics should play a role in how administration officials are treated in public.
Sanders was the latest to experience a brusque reception in such a setting.
Sanders tweeted she was told by the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., that she had to “leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left.” She said the episode Friday evening said far more about the owner of the restaurant than it did about her.
“I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” Sanders said in the tweet from her official account, which generated 22,000 replies in about an hour.
The restaurant’s co-owner Stephanie Wilkinson told The Washington Post her staff had called her to report Sanders was in the restaurant. She cited several reasons, including the concerns of several restaurant employees who were gay and knew Sanders had defended Trump’s desire to bar transgender people from the military.
“Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave,” Wilkinson said to staff, she said. “They said yes.”
Wilkinson said she talked to Sanders privately and Sanders’s response was immediate: “That’s fine. I’ll go.”
Employees at the restaurant told The Associated Press Wilkinson wasn’t available for further comment.
Sanders’ treatment at the restaurant created a socialmedia commotion with people on both sides weighing in, including her father Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate.
“Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate,’” Huckabee said in a tweet, quickly generating 2,000 replies in about 30 minutes. “And appetizers are 'small plates for small minds.’ ”
Tom Lomax, a local business owner, brought flowers to the restaurant Saturday as a show of support. He called Wilkinson a “force of nature” and “one of the biggest drivers of the downtown.
“We support our own here, great little community we have,” he said.
Stephen Russek, a former restaurant owner in the area, said “they had no right to do that.”
“You have your political opinions, you don’t throw somebody out of your restaurant,” Russek, who lives nearby, said. “They ought to be shut down.”