President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday to slam the Virginia restaurant that kicked out his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, over the weekend.
Trump wrote that The Red Hen in Lexington “should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”
“I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!” the president wrote.
The Associated Press noted that online images of the restaurant did not appear to show evidence of "serious disrepair."
Huckabee Sanders confirmed Saturday on Twitter that she was asked to leave The Red Hen “because I work for @POTUS.”
Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of The Red Hen, told The Washington Post that she personally asked Sanders to leave the restaurant after speaking with some of her employees, who felt uncomfortable about serving Sanders.
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” she told the newspaper. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
The incident happened days after protesters confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she was eating at a Washington-area Mexican restaurant amid criticism of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump ended the policy with an executive order last week.
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