San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Defender of Trump policies asked to leave restaurant
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant Friday night because of her work in the Trump administration, becoming the latest official to be singled out for her support of the president’s policies.
In a Saturday tweet, Sanders said the owner of the restaurant, the Red Hen in Lexington, suggested she leave and that she complied.
The woman’s actions “say far more about her than about me,” Sanders said. “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”
Red Hen co-owner Stephanie Wilkinson told the Washington Post that her staff had called her to report Sanders was at the restaurant. She said several gay employees knew Sanders had defended President Donald 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 she told her staff. “They said yes.”
Wilkinson said she talked to Sanders privately and Sanders said, “That’s fine. I’ll go.”
Red Hen’s website appeared to have crashed Saturday morning as reports of the episode began circulating.
The encounter is the third time this past week in which a Trump administration official was confronted over his or her political stance.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled Tuesday night while dining at a Mexican restaurant. “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace,” demonstrators shouted, according to video of the confrontation shared on social media.
And Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president known for his hard-line stance on immigration, was described as a “fascist” by a protester last Sunday, also while at a Mexican restaurant, the New York Post reported.
While the administration struggles to reunite the families amid outrage over images and audio recordings of sobbing children taken from their parents, the divisive messaging on both sides of the debate has intensified.
Within hours, the Red Hen’s review pages online painted a stark picture of the divide: Some people left glowing reviews for the farm-to-table restaurant from halfway across the coun- try, and others denounced the political choices of the owner.