Red Hen Drama Continues: Other Businesses Now Suffering From the Backlash (Video)

“The management at Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant that booted Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has all the right in the world to deny service to any person it does not want patronizing its business,” as Kurt Nimmo explained in a piece we shared earlier today.

That isn’t stopping people from launching into hysterics about The Red Hen’s decision (by the way, all of this media attention will probably bring the restaurant MORE business – from advocates of free association, and from fellow Trump-haters).

Naturally, Trump had to chime in on Twitter…

The Red Hen Restaurant 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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018

People on Twitter were quick to respond…

https://t.co/nvf5K7Hiij

— Bruce Martin (@unlikebeejay) June 25, 2018

While Trump's restaurant got an order to fix its "black/green mold-like substance" problem, the Red Hen got nothing but praise in its last health inspection in February. h/t: @tuckerhiggins https://t.co/sEKGeP4L3g https://t.co/8L0PVvEQ96

— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) June 25, 2018

https://t.co/cVpWVZNNyD

— Ellen #MMT #LearnMMT ??? (@GreenMMT) June 26, 2018

Others pointed out that in 2012, the steakhouse at Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas was forced to briefly shut down when health inspectors found more than 50 violations.

Isn’t it slander to make untrue statements about of person or their business? If President Trump said this business was filthy yet they have an A+ on their health inspection score isn’t it illegal for him to say that?

— CJ (@cjbythebeach) June 26, 2018

Do you understand how evidence works? Now you’re gonna have to write Red Hen’s lawyers a check.

— E.B. DIXON (@EBAUTEUR) June 26, 2018

And, others pointed out that in a free society, businesses should be able to refuse service if they so choose…and the president should stay out of it…

Free market economy, you don't have to go there neither are they compelled to serve her.Virtue & conviction apply.

— DANIEL WANDOLO (@DWANDOLO) June 26, 2018

Yet you won't condemn a bakery for not serving a gay couple. It's Red Hen's right to deny service to @PressSec or anyone else for that matter.

— Krystal ✌ (@_Ovaryacting) June 26, 2018

So it's okay for a baker to refuse service to somebody for their sexual orientation but not okay for a restaurant owner to refuse service to somebody for their political affiliation? #Fascinating #Hypocrisy

— Ryan O'Hagan (@rtohagan) June 26, 2018

talking shit about small businesses to the whole country is the last thing a president should be doing.

— eric (@erichamilton_) June 26, 2018

Are you seriously attacking an American small business for having an opinion different than yours? You are the President of the United States, you should be representing all Americans, regardless of who they voted for or what the believe in.

— William Morrissey (@w_morr) June 26, 2018

In case you are wondering about the legality of refusing service, only three jurisdictions in the US forbid discrimination based on political affiliation: Washington DC, Seattle, and the Virgin Islands.

Freedom of association is the foundation of a truly free society:

Unfortunately, people who are not in any way involved with The Red Hen in Virginia are feeling the backlash too.

Michael Friedman of the Red Hen restaurant, located in D.C.’s Bloomingdale neighborhood, is one of those people.

From WTOP:

Unfortunately, Friedman’s eatery — along with similarly named restaurants in New Jersey and Connecticut — have been the target of social media outrage ever since. Thousands of tweets and such aimed at Friedman’s place have ranged from merely critical to outright threatening.

“We’ve received death threats,” Friedman said.

Unflattering online reviews have been coming in as well: “One out of five stars for no reason,” he said. At one point Monday, the eatery’s Yelp profile had been hacked to read that it only serves Democrats.

There has even been some old-school vandalism, Friedman said: The restaurant got egged, “which is, um, ironic — ’cause The Hen got egged,” he joked.

The former owner of a long-closed restaurant called The Red Hen in Georgia has been receiving a stream of irate complaints about his establishment, courtesy of the irrational internet mob mentality.

The Verge has found at least 10 different restaurants that were mistaken for the one that ejected Sanders — or assumed to be part of some giant franchise of tiny locavore joints:

A Red Hen in Swedesboro, New Jersey, (motto: “deliciously simple food”) posted an exasperated note after receiving hundreds of phone calls about the incident. An unrelated restaurant in Connecticut pleaded with angry Facebook users: “People! PLEASE. Do not react before you know which FB page to which you are posting.” Across the border in Ontario, Canada, the Olde Red Hen’s owners were condemned as “liberal trash.” No restaurant was remote enough to escape the ire — not even the Little Red Hen in Muntinlupa City, Philippines, which was called out for 86-ing “one of the finest woman in this country.”

***

“We had to shut down our website, we had to shut down our Facebook, and we’re getting calls all day long for the last couple days,” says Sara Carpenter, assistant manager for the Red Hen Bar and Grill in Napa, California. Several “Red Hen” Yelp pages have been flagged for protection by the site’s support staff.

A few minutes ago, it was announced that Stephanie Wilkinson, the co-owner of The Red Hen restaurant who is the person who asked Sanders to leave the restaurant due to her political affiliation, resigned from her position as executive director of the volunteer organization Main Street Lexington.

When asked why she asked Sanders to leave the restaurant, Wilkinson explained that she asked her employees how they felt about Sanders’ presence. They were uncomfortable, and wanted Sanders to leave.

She then privately asked Sanders to leave.

Wilkinson added that “…Sarah Huckabee Sanders worked in the service of an ‘inhumane and unethical’ administration. That she publicly defended the president’s cruelest policies, and that that could not stand.”

“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said. “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.”

If you are one of the people who thinks The Red Hen was wrong for ousting Sanders, so be it. But ask yourself this: would you have been upset if Josh Earnest, Obama’s press secretary, had been asked to leave?

If you owned a business, would you want to be forced to serve people whose values and morals conflict with yours? Or would you like to reserve the right to refuse service to them?

I’ll leave you with these wise words from Kurt Nimmo:

In a more sane and rational world, every property owner would have the freedom to exercise the natural born right to deny service or goods to any person for any reason. When government steps in and tells you what you can and can’t do with your property, you are reduced to the status of a landless serf at the mercy of the state.

I’m afraid we’re at the point now where far too many Americans believe the state should be the final arbiter in personal matters. Decades of social engineering have resulted in a dumbed-down public, citizens that agree the state has the right to useviolence against those who nonviolently resist its authority.