Restaurant dismissal launches politics discrimination debate

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was booted from a Virginia restaurant Friday because she works for President 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.

Stephanie Wilkerson, co-owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., says she asked Sanders to leave after her staffers voted to oust the press secretary.

Over the weekend, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich weighed in on the increasingly nasty tone of politics. Gingrich was known for setting a more combative tone in congressional politics in the 1990s.

“The increasing personal nastiness toward people who work for President Trump reflects the left’s understanding that they are losing,” Gingrich said in a tweet. “Nastiness reflects desperation, not strength. They can’t win the argument so they use nastiness. Sad and dangerous.”

Sanders’ treatment at the restaurant created a social media 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.’ ”

Earlier in the week, Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, cut short a working dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington after protesters shouted, “Shame!” until she left. A few days earlier, Trump aide Stephen Miller, a key adviser on immigration, was accosted by someone at a different Mexican restaurant in the city, who called him “a fascist,” according to the New York Post. On Friday, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump ally, was confronted by protesters after a screening of the Mr. Rogers documentary.