White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Saturday that she was kicked out of a Virginia restaurant on Friday evening simply because she works for President Donald Trump.
"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," Sanders wrote on her official press secretary Twitter account. "Her actions say far more about her than about me."
Though the particulars of the incident could not be immediately confirmed, the tweet qualified as an uncommonly specific attack from an official White House account on a private business.
Owners of the Red Hen, which is located about 180 miles southwest of D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, on Friday night, Jaike Foley-Schultz, who described himself as a waiter at the Red Hen in Lexington, wrote on Facebook that he had just just served Sanders before she was asked to leave. Sanders did not mention family members in her account of the episode, but the post would seem to match what the press secretary tweeted Saturday.
"I just served Sarah huckabee sanders [sic] for a total of 2 minutes before my owner asked her to leave and she complied," Foley-Schultz wrote. "Her family left on their own accord, we didn't actually refuse service or 'kick her out.'"
Sanders would not have been the first member of the Trump administration to experience grief in public for their work.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's dinner at MXDC, a Mexican restaurant in Washington, was interrupted by protesters from the Democratic Socialists of America on Tuesday, who shouted at her "shame" and "If kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace." Other demonstrators chanted outside her Virginia townhouse on Friday morning. In both instances, Nielsen was singled out for her defense of the administration's zero tolerance immigration policy that resulted in the separations of some migrant families.
Sanders' predecessor, Sean Spicer, was confronted at an Apple store in the D.C. area in March 2017 by a woman who asked him: "How does it feel to work for a fascist?" Other Trump staffers told POLITICO Magazine that they are sometimes the object of obscene gestures when leaving the White House grounds.
In her statement about being asked to leave from Red Hen in Lexington — which is not affiliated with the D.C. establishment of the same name — Sanders said she would not treat someone with whom she disagreed in a similar manner.
"I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so," she wrote on Twitter.
Mike Huckabee, Sanders' father, defended her on Twitter, saying "bigotry is on the menu" at the restaurant. Earlier Saturday, Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and now a conservative commentator, tweeted a photo, supposedly of MS-13 gang members, with the caption: "Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House."
However, Sanders has trashed reporters to their faces during the White House press briefings that are often aired on national television. For instance, during a back and forth with Jim Acosta on June 14, Sanders chided the veteran CNN reporter for pressing her on comments Attorney General Jeff Sessions made about the Bible and family separations.
"I know it's hard for you to understand even short sentences, I guess, but please don't take my words out of context," Sanders said.