Wasn’t it not too long ago that the left had a moral conniption fit because business owners and government employees across the nation were refusing service based on moral convictions? These poor businesses, proprietors, and government servants became the target of a relentless campaign of hate, including boycotts and legal action.
But by all accounts, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was recently asked to leave the Red Hen Restaurant simply because she worked for the president and the business owner opposes Trump’s immigration policy. Sanders acknowledged the incident via a tweet:
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
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) June 23, 2018
According to the Washington Post, “Owner Stephanie stated that one of the chefs at her restaurant had called her at home to tell her Sanders was sitting in the tiny restaurant, and that the staff had concerns. Wilkinson then drove over, huddled up with her staff and asked whether they would like Sanders to leave. They said yes.”
But what you may not know is that even after Sanders politely left the establishment, witnesses report that the owner followed President Trump’s press secretary out of her restaurant and across the street to another establishment where she continued to harass her.
As reported by Fox Business: “After White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and her family were kicked out of a Virginia restaurant on Friday evening, the owner of the establishment followed the group and kept berating them as told by Mike Huckabee, Sanders’ father and the former Arkansas governor.”
Mike Huckabee went on to say in an interview on The Intelligence Report with Trish Regan: “In fact, a little known part of this story, is that after Sarah and her husband left and the family relocated to a restaurant across the street, the owner of the Red Hen then organized an effort to go and scream at them from the sidewalk at the other restaurant.”
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
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson told the Post. “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.”
Wait…what? Uphold their morals? This was your justification?
Wasn’t it just nineteen days ago that the Supreme Court issued a ruling sympathetic to a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding? Let’s explore that, shall we? The Supreme Court ruled in a dramatic 7-2 vote that Colorado authorities “showed impermissible hostility” toward the sincere religious beliefs of the business owner.
Wasn’t it you, the morally outraged left, that attacked business owners because they refused service on moral grounds? And yet now, here you stand allowing a business owner to attack a customer simply because she works for the President?
Consider the case of Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland, Washington, who refused to provide flowers in 2013 for the wedding of two longtime customers, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed. Stutzman explained that as a Southern Baptist, it violates her religious beliefs and her “relationship with Jesus Christ,” and therefore she could not create the floral arrangements for the wedding.
Please note: Stutzman never refused them service over a long number of years, she just didn’t want to create the floral arrangements for their wedding on her “moral” grounds. Much like Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker from the Supreme Court decision above, she said her floral arrangements were works of art and that having to create them for a same-sex wedding would violate her freedom of expression. But yet, she was attacked, vilified, and sued.
Furthermore, unlike your hero of the Red Hen, these business owners objected on deeply-held religious beliefs, not some pseudo-BS argument over an immigration policy. They neither followed their customers out of their establishments to continue to harass them as they went elsewhere nor did they show up at their wedding to protest and crash it.
So who is the party of hate and intolerance now?
Let’s just consider that this is the third such encounter in over a week, where Trump administration officials have been accosted simply because they work for the President.
Earlier in the week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was confronted at a Mexican restaurant by left-wing activists protesting the Trump immigration policy. “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace,” demonstrators shouted, according to video of the confrontation shared on social media.
And Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president known for his hard-line stance on immigration, was described as a “fascist” by a protester on Sunday, also while at a Mexican restaurant, The New York Post reported.
This is exactly what the leadership of the fringe left want; by their own words are they condemned.
Just look at what Maxine Waters, the Democrat from California had to say to her supporters about harassing and accosting Trump administration officials: “The American people have put up with this president long enough. What more do we need to see? What more lies do we need to hear?” Waters shouted at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday.
“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said, later telling MSNBC that protesters are “going to absolutely harass them.”
This is borderline incitement to riot. Should we not start holding these politicians accountable? Inciting a riot applies to a person who organizes, encourages, or participates in a riot. It can apply to one who urges or instigates others to riot.
According to 18 USCS § 2102, “to incite a riot” or “to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts [emphasis added].”
How far will this go? Wasn’t it just a few short years ago that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was injured in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice game? Wasn’t that shooting a result of “stirring up the base”?
“Whip Scalise knows firsthand the dangerous consequences that can result from making political differences personal and vitriolic,” spokeswoman Lauren Fine said in a statement. “We are lucky to live in a country where we have the right to freely debate our differences civilly. Harassment is never an acceptable method of disagreement.”
Here you have a sitting member of the US House of Representatives actually telling her constituents to “get out and form a crowd” and “push back on them.” Sounds to me like she is asking them to riot.
Folks, the more and more we see, the more and more we realize that the true party of hate and intolerance is the left. We need to no longer be silent and passive to otherwise unacceptable actions. It is time to stand up and demand civil discourse and civility.
