Déjà Vu – DC Restaurant Workers Plan To Sabotage Trump Admin Personnel
“You expect the masses to just ignore RFK [Jr.] eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?”
Workers in Washington, D.C. area restaurants told the Washingtonian they plan to refuse service or provide substandard service to Trump officials. This behavior isn’t exactly new. It’s simply a return to the bad old days of Trump’s first term when administration officials were frequently subjected to this behavior.
We recall high-profile slights such as when the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, famously asked then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment in June 2018.
Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so
— Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) June 23, 2018
I guess we’re heading into an America with Democrat-only restaurants, which will lead to Republican-only restaurants. Do the fools who threw Sarah out, and the people who cheer them on, really want us to be that kind of country? https://t.co/n7RxHHoYF3
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) June 23, 2018
Around the same time, Antifa protestors harassed then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant in D.C. where she was dining with a friend, yelling, “Shame!” They were angry over remarks Nielsen had made about family separations at the border.
Appears no authorities intervened to stop abolish-ICE antifa harassing DHS Secy Kirstjen Nielsen at DC restaurant last night. Meanwhile, CNN's @ananavarro suggests Nielsen, a Florida native, should stick to her own ethnicity in choosing restaurants. https://t.co/RF0ovbK0cc pic.twitter.com/VDV1uoxDEF
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 20, 2018
In September 2018, during the Brett Kavanaugh Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife Heidi were driven out of an Italian restaurant by protestors.
Sen. Ted Cruz was chased out of a DC restaurant by anti-Kavanaugh paid SOROS operatives.
When Sen. Cruz and his wife attempted to sit down to eat, their table was surrounded by chanting aggressive operatives trained & sent by leftist radicals! pic.twitter.com/qWqijJKFdQ
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) September 25, 2018
This behavior was encouraged by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who famously railed, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store … you get out and you create a crowd. … tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet” -Rep. Maxine Waters urges public to confront Trump officials days after Kirstjen Nielsen & Sarah Sanders are approached at restaurants pic.twitter.com/kc4n1ZH8M9
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 25, 2018
The author of the Washingtonian article, Jessica Sidman, appeared to be completely on board with the new rules. After all, she believes that “Home Rule” is under threat.
This time around, with a full Republican sweep of government, an even larger cast of divisive characters, and no Trump Hotel in which to congregate, the MAGA crowd is likely to feel even more omnipresent when they swagger into DC. Inevitably, that will lead to clashes in a fiercely blue, politically engaged city where Home Rule is under threat, countless jobs are at risk, and less than 7 percent of voters picked Trump in the first place.
Zac Hoffman, a manager at the National Democratic Club, told Sidman, “The shift in politics will be visceral across several aspects of daily life. You expect the masses to just ignore RFK [Jr.] eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?”
Actually Zac, yes, we do.
Hoffman goes so far as to say that RFK Jr.’s presence would put undue pressure on restaurant staff and fellow diners. “If you’re just going out for a nice dinner or it’s your anniversary or birthday and, God forbid, RFK Jr. is sitting next to you, now you’re going to be dealing with whatever repercussions happen from that.”
Suzannah Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Saloon in Capitol Hill, shared her “red lines” with Sidman. “I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people. It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans.’ It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”
“Fine-dining bartender Nancy,” who wished to remain anonymous, said she would refuse to serve certain Trump officials. “There is power in making it known that you’re not comfortable with a situation, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be this big dramatic show. It’s just little bits of resistance that add up, and little bits of resistance that other people will see and hopefully feel empowered to stand on those convictions as well.”
“Bartender Joseph,” who voted for Harris, is pleased about the new crop of Republicans coming into D.C. Republicans, he claims, are better tippers and generally lower maintenance guests than Democrats. “I think my tip average from Republicans—at least ones that I or a coworker has recognized—is close to 30 percent. With Dems, I’m surprised if it’s over 20.”
One DC restaurant owner, a lifelong Democrat, told Sidman he believes in serving everyone and said he has spoken with his staff about this. “We chose our profession, and it’s the hospitality industry and sometimes we have to serve people that we don’t like. … We can’t create negative situations. We need to de-escalate situations, not escalate them in restaurants.”
The author acknowledges that most restaurant owners or workers do not welcome the “negative attention that comes with a big messy confrontation. But some may turn to discreet acts of resistance aimed less at causing a scene and more at empowering themselves in small ways.”
Nancy, the anonymous bartender, agreed, saying, “This person theoretically has the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entree. … There’s a lot of opportunities for us as workers to feel like we’re taking our power back, while not necessarily ruining someone’s life. Giving them a subtle inconvenience feels like a little bit of a win for us.”
One D.C. area hostess said she would give a Republican a bad table but would “otherwise guarantee decent and polite service.”
Frankly, restaurant workers can do whatever they want – once. However, if they do, chances are pretty good that half of their business will evaporate pretty quickly. After all, there’s no shortage of restaurants out there to choose from.
That “subtle inconvenience” that the aforementioned Nancy said feels like a “little bit of a win,” may turn out to be more expensive than she expects.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
So we just keep taxing tips on restaurant workers in DC.
Lower their taxes: leave no tip.
Seems like they don’t recognize the bubble they live in, if 20% tips are considered LOW. So, help them out with that.
A restaurant operator is considered an innkeeper at common law, and owes its guests the highest level of care. A bartender or waiter who throws a drink at a customer (to say nothing of throwing it in the customer’s face) is likely to subject the restaurant to significant damages.
Her statement was not about employees doing this, but other customers.
A restaurant or indeed an inn is entitled to refuse someone service for any reason it likes, except those explicitly prohibited by law. Likewise potential customers are entitled to refuse to deal with a restaurant or an inn.
Simple answer…your money goes Galt.
Bye-bye.
Repercussions for sitting down in a restaurant? It seems that the d/prog want to go back to the bad old days of exclusion where the d/prog use tactics of fear, terror, mobs and sometimes actual violence to enforce their discriminatory philosophy.
Counter tactic, load the place up with people who say the are waiting for others to join them, get them to setup group space, only order water. Then have a known Republican come, when they get uppity, everyone walks out. Have video of the encounter.
I did something like this many years ago.
Yep. Next will be separate water fountains for d/prog vs conservatives, special designated seats at the back of the bus, and special lanes on roads for weapons laden cargo bicycles.
Interesting that that one woman mentioned sex trafficking as one of her objections to serving somebody. Does that mean she would deny service to Joe Biden who is the most prolific sex trafficker in history?
can’t believe the owner(s) of any serious service business would tolerate such behaviour from an employee–certainly wouldn’t myself–customers are the life blood of any business or profession–people can dine anywhere and they will come to a place that may not have a 5star chef or a cellar direct from france but that welcomes them, treats them like royalty, smiles at them and lets them relax and unwind
excellent service to customers / clients is the best insurance for the success of any business–any employee that negatively impacts that ethic needs to go ( and probably never should have been hired )
Pffft! The owners deserve to lose business and close.
Any owner with an ounce of brains will warn the employees in no uncertain terms that rudeness to a customer or deliberately providing poor service will be grounds for immediate termination and that if anyone is foolish enough to assault a customer, the police will be called.
Yes, but owners with half an ounce of brains will be at risk.
The resistance. Such idiots. Making mountains out of molehills. Making no difference except to hurt others. Supporting the worst policies and people. They are too dumb to understand what they could have accomplished when dealing with Trump at arms length.
If any of this nonsense happens, the name of the restaurant needs to be publicized so that we can avoid going to it. And restaurant owners need to be told that will happen.
There aren’t many restaurant owners who would let their employees do anything that will make half of their customers stop coming.
So start keeping a very public list of establishments practicing this kind of intolerance. And they might just get a big, ugly, and difficult-to-remove “Republicans Not Welcome Here” sign stuck to their street window.
“Are there no Norwegian restaurants in Washington DC?”
And they tell us it’s conservatives who are xenophobic.
Let me tell you about our lutefisk of the day.
“Are there no Norwegian restaurants in Washington DC?”
It sounds an awful lot like earlier Democrats who said “Surely there are colored restaurants you people can go to.”
You’re not “the masses”, you’re an overly entitled lunatic fringe.
Damn straight.
This. It just goes to show how out of touch the Beltwayites are from the actual masses of the country they claim entitlement to rule.
I owned a very small restaurant in Ketchikan, Alaska for a short period.
It was my first business venture.
Had one of my Employees alienated a single Customer, I would have instantly eliminated them.
My survival was in service, not ideals.
Tips are going to be a bit light
How do we know that?
Well, this will cause restaurants to be left with mostly Democrat customers. And in Washington DC most Democrats are from Canada and we know that Canadians don’t tip all that well.
Not only that but people don’t tip for bad service
Old joke: What is the difference between a Canadian and a canoe?
Canoes tip.
Scratch a DC Democrat restaurateur, find Lester Maddox.
Sooner or later their answer is always Jim Crow.
To my knowledge, the principle of TANSTAAFL has yet to be abolished. So if restaurateurs want to arbitrarily reduce demand for their product and services, that is their choice but it will have the foreseeable consequence of reducing revenue.
The profit margin for restaurants is usually about 5%, but probably tighter in Biden’s America. These owners can ill afford to have poor server staff compounding their low profit.
Fire them or get out of the restaurant business
Will this make the price of the woke establishment lower and more tempting to Elon??? 🙂
This is D.C. Any waiter or waitress doing this gets a Congressional citation when the Dems thin out the GOP in the House. When 91% of D.C. is Dem…nothing will be done. Now if it were reversed, the restaurant would be fire bombed.
“I think my tip average from Republicans—at least ones that I or a coworker has recognized—is close to 30 percent. With Dems, I’m surprised if it’s over 20.”
Not a wise move. Severely limit your income because you will not leave your prejudices at home.
Huh? He’s saying he’s happy the Republicans are coming. How is he limiting his income?
I am surprised you can breathe without thinking about it first.
Windmill!
Nice to know segregation is back in style from the party that created it.
I guess it won’t be long before blacks aren’t permitted to sit at the serving counter if they happen to be Republican.
Republicans… the new Negro of the Democratic Party.
Taking the “hospitality” out of the hospitality business.
Even the old Arab standard of treating guests who come into one’s tent, with courtesy and hospitality, is a bridge too far for the infantile and stupid Dhimmi-crat fanatics.
The response should be an official list maintained either by the White House or by the RNC, of businesses where Republicans are not welcome.
All Republicans in the administration and Congress should be briefed on the protocol: If you think you’re being mistreated because of who you are, don’t let it go, complain to the manager. If you get no satisfactory response from the manager, call this number and they will track down the owners and inform them of what’s happening at their restaurant, and that they have a choice of fixing it or going on the list.
The list should be public, not just to administration and congressional staff but to anyone visiting DC. Put in on the RNC web site. Republican visitors should consult the list and not patronize any establishment on it.
And any actual criminal offense, such as throwing a drink at someone, should be immediately reported to the police and the number on the list, and the RNC will call the police and follow up to make sure the matter is not quietly dropped.
Another option is the Congress can always remove DC ‘home rule’ and reassert direct control of the Federal District.
How would that help with this? Even with direct congressional control it couldn’t force restaurants to serve Republicans.
2024 is a different environment than 2018: because of COVID,and people not returning to the office (and likely also a lot more unemployment in DC due to DOGE), restaurants will not be able to afford to shun money. Leftist owners that encourage this will go belly-up.
I don’t go to restaurants in sketchy areas, including DC area. One never knows if they are going to piss in your soup, spit into your sandwich, prepare food without washing hands, and lord knows the disease democrats bring with their perverted ways.
Just shut down DC by moving any remaining government agency out into the hinterlands.
No more DC, no more snotty nose democrats working.
If this happens to Republicans again, this time don’t take it like Republicans for a change..
I am sorry to say that Republicans are OK with being hanged, as long as the rope is new and clean.
Republicans historically don’t fight for anything, including their constituents. They only care about being invited to the next drug, alcohol, and child molestation party in Georgetown.
This falls on the restaurant owners–they need to sit down with the employees and tell them that they have clear expectations that all diners will be treated equally–the first employee slow walking someone’s entree, or providing substandard service, or discriminating against Republicans should be fired and then the rest should be told that is what is going to happen each time the owner discovers they have violated these rules–make it part of the written policies the business
Exiling…er, relocating every Federal government bureaucracy, with the possible exception of State and Defense, out to the real world (preferably blue states, so as not to pollute red state voter rolls), is one of the best ideas to come along in quite some time. I hope Vivek and Elon and DJT/JDV can get it rolling, at least. There’s plenty of vacant office space in lots of blue sh**hole cities, and most of these mopes apparently show up at the office only rarely, anyway. I definitely can be done. Don’t feel like moving from NOVA to, say, Albuquerque, NM or Providence, RI? Resign and get a real job. Heh.
“IT definitely can be done. Sorry, bad proofreading.
hahahaha, the staffer Van Rooy has now been fired by the restaurant:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/d-c-restaurant-server-fired-after-comments-about-refusing-service-some-trump-officials-horrified
Wait until they start poisoning people.
(They’re leftists. There’s no lie they won’t tell, and no life they won’t take.)