Montana grill refuses to mix food and politics, cancels GOP rally
WASHINGTON— In the great dining dilemma of the Trump administration, there is no neutral territory. To serve is to face accusations of normalization, even complicity. Not to serve is to be tarred as uncivil, lacking proper table manners.
This was the painful lesson learned by the Red Hen of Lexington, Va., in June, when the restaurant’s staff refused to serve White Donald Trump Jr. and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle. House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
The latest restaurant caught in the culinary crosshairs of the country’s hyperpartisan moment is the Midtown Tavern in Bozeman, Mont. It’s where Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, formerly of Fox News, were scheduled to appear next week for a rally with Matt Rosendale, the state’s Republican auditor, who is competing for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Jon Tester.
But when the candidate’s t eam announced t he planned appearance Tuesday, the bar & grill’s manager backpedaled.
“That’s just not who we are,” Jeff Wilcox said, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
But the manager did not attribute the cancellation to the Trump factor. “We just try to stay politically neutral,” the manager told the paper. “We’re a restaurant.”
He said he had been unaware of the booking, which was the result of a misunderstanding. The Midtown Tavern “does not intend to take political sides,” he told radio station KMMS.
Shane Scanlon, a Rosen- dale spokesman, told the Chronicle that more than 200 people had reserved tickets for the event and that the campaign needed another venue that could accommodate “the unprecedented demand.”
The event has been relocated to the Gallatin County Fairgrounds, according to KMMS radio.
The president’s son has stirred controversy on multiple fronts in recent days. On Sunday, he tweeted a photo of Anderson Cooper standing in waist-deep wa- ter during a hurricane, suggesting incorrectly that the CNN anchor was falsifying the danger of the storm. Cooper spent the first 10 minutes of his show Monday night rebutting the claims.
The same day, Trump Jr. posted an image to his Instagram account depicting a juvenile love letter as a way of belittling the accusation of sexual assault leveled by Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh, his father’s nominee to the Supreme Court.