The
White House press secretary was asked to leave The
Red Hen in
Virginia.
White House press secretary
Sarah Sanders was just sitting down to a farm-to-table meal at The Red Hen in
Lexington, Virginia, Friday evening when, she said, the restaurant’s owner heard she was there ― and promptly asked her to leave.
According to Sanders, the owner objected to her work defending President
Donald Trump, who has been under fire for an immigration policy widely decried as unnecessarily cruel.
“I politely left,” the press secretary said on Twitter.
“I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” she added.
The restaurant could not be immediately reached for comment.
Sanders’ father, former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee, reacted by quipping that “bigotry” was “on the menu” at the restaurant shortly after posting a tweet conflating migrant families with MS-13 gang members.
The Red Hen, around a three-hour drive southwest of the White House, specializes in using locally sourced ingredients and offers a seasonal menu. A server there who was assigned Sanders’ table said she had arrived with her family.
“I just served Sarah huckabee sanders for a total of 2 minutes before my owner asked her to leave and she complied,” Jaike Foley-Schultz wrote on Facebook.
He stressed that the incident was less than dramatic.
The comments sections on the restaurant’s Yelp and Facebook pages are now precisely the opposite. The Red Hen has been flooded with many one-star and some five-star reviews from commenters on both sides of the political spectrum.
“This is what America should stand for,” wrote a woman from New York, according to her Yelp profile.
A New Jersey man wrote a missive aimed at the owner, saying, “your food is horrible and soon the board of health will be closing you down due to your cockroach infested establishment filled with DUMOCRATS!!!!”
“Boo!” wrote another on Facebook. Directly below, another Facebook user wrote, “Bravo!”
The move drew comparisons to the conservative Christian baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple in Colorado, whose decision was upheld in the Supreme Court earlier this month.
Sanders’ experience comes days after two other Trump administration officials, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior adviser Stephen Miller ― both instrumental in Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy ― were confronted by protesters at Mexican restaurants in the capital.