A sort of ban has been recommended with regard to President Donald J. Trump at local eateries in Washington, D.C.
Generally speaking, a sitting president dining at a local establishment would provide a huge boost for its business.
The Washingtonian, however, is suggesting that Trump steer clear or risk hurting establishments in the nation's capital.
This is far from the first time we have seen this attitude toward Trump administration officials and other Republicans. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to the time when then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was booted out of a restaurant for daring to work for the bad orange man.
Sanders and her family went to the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, where employees were so aghast, they asked the owner of the restaurant to ask the entire Sanders party to leave. Stephanie Wilkinson, the co-owner of the restaurant, claimed that Sanders worked for an "inhumane and unethical" administration. Wilkinson explained that she told her staff, "Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave. They said yes."
I worked in the restaurant industry for a long time, and I served plenty of people I did not like or respect, but I treated them just like I would any other customer. The ONLY time I asked people to leave or refused them service was when they were disrespectful to me or my staff, period.
The Sanders incident started an online battle between conservatives, liberals, and the restaurant, with the eatery eventually shutting its doors. This was just temporary, however, as the restaurant subsequently rebranded as ZunZun and reopened at the same location under the same ownership. As far as I can tell, the restaurant is thriving again, with no more protests and nobody else being refused service, so lessons learned.
That was far from the first time, and it would not be the last, as conservative pundits such as Tomi Lahren have also been approached at restaurants, as has Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, just to name a few.
One of the more outrageous examples was when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was confronted at a restaurant in Houston after speaking at an NRA convention.
The man responsible was eventually identified as Indivisible Houston board member Benjamin Hernandez, who pretended to want a selfie with Cruz.
Then, once he had Cruz’s attention, Hernandez started ranting, “It is harder when there are more guns to stop gun violence. It is not ignorance. We are in this country, and there are guns everywhere. … Why is it so hard?”
With Trump now touting a much safer D.C. due to his crime crackdown, members of the media asked him whether he might start dining out, and the president said he just may start to do so, but Washingtonian food editor Jessica Sidman took exception to that, suggesting that he ban himself from visiting local spots. Sidman wrote, "The problem? Pretty much any D.C. restaurant that the president might visit would immediately find itself in a losing situation."
She then planted the seed, "Trump, though, isn’t likely to go somewhere he’d be turned away, especially given the advance work required by Secret Service. And most restaurants would serve him because that’s just what restaurants do. Still, they would undoubtedly face boycott threats from locals and an onslaught of online and real-life rage."
This is an absolute and utter disgrace to suggest that a sitting president is not free to dine in D.C. Or, maybe it is more representative of the sad mental state of the left that liberals would put a local restaurant out of business just because of who walked through its front doors.
For those pointing to what happened at the Red Hen, I would say that was more about how someone was treated rather than the identity of the person dining there. I would never recommend a boycott of a restaurant or business because of Obama, AOC, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) or Ilhan Omar (D-MN) dining there. And if a conservative restaurant staffer had a problem with them dining there, I would tell them to grow up. It should be a privilege to have a sitting president dine, not a death sentence. This suggestion by Sidman, to me, is just pathetic.
