D.C. restaurant employee fired after stating plans to refuse service to some Trump officials

An employee at a Capitol Hill restaurant in Washington, D.C., was fired on Friday for making public comments about her plans to possibly refuse to serve Trump administration officials who come to that establishment. 

"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," Suzannah Van Rooy, who worked at Beuchert's Saloon, told the Washingtonian magazine this week, according to Fox News.  

"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."

Her comments were included in an article about the likelihood of “resistance” to members of Donald Trump’s administration, similar to what happened during his first administration in several high-profile incidents. One example was when then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was told to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., because she worked for then-President Trump. She left without incident. 

"People were a lot more motivated the first time around to do those kinds of shows of passion. This time around, there is kind of a sense of defeat and acceptance," Van Rooy said, according to the Washingtonian. "But I hope that people still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior."

Van Rooy listed her duties at the restaurant on her LinkedIn page as “doing daily operations, messaging strategies for the restaurant, developing relationships with influencers, and managing in-house events for political figures and VIPs.”

Beuchert's Saloon fired back that Van Rooy's remarks were "reprehensible" and that she had been fired for violating their "zero-tolerance policy on discrimination." They said that she was a part-time server and not a manager. 

"Recent comments made by a member of staff who had no authority to speak on behalf of our entire restaurant have been, quite rightly, flagged as inappropriate, hostile, intolerant, and unacceptable. This staff member does NOT speak for us as a restaurant," Beuchert's initial statement on Thursday said.