The White House Is Mad at a Red Hen

The very nicely painted and canopied Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.

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Last Friday, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, quietly asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party to leave because her staff was uncomfortable serving a member of the Trump administration. The next morning one of the servers wrote about it on his Facebook page and Sanders confirmed what had happened. The rest of the weekend was then consumed with a firestorm over civility and blah blah blah. Today our commander-in-chief weighed in:

Charming, as always. But there’s method to the madness: Trump wants to make sure that anyone who criticizes him—directly or indirectly—pays a big price. If that means bringing the hammer of the presidency of the United States down on some poor schmoe in Lexington, Virginia, that’s fine. It sends a message to others that tangling with him just isn’t worth it. This has already worked pretty well within the business community, which appears to have been entirely cowed by Trump already.

This is how people like Trump operate: they shut down criticism by making it too personally costly to engage in. He knows perfectly well what a presidential tweet is likely to produce, and that’s all part of the plan. Eventually, he hopes, everyone will be cowed.

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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