A server in Washington, D.C. has been fired after she said she would refuse to serve certain officials in Donald Trump’s incoming administration who have been accused of sexual misconduct.
The server was working at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill when she made the comments to Washingtonian magazine for a story about D.C. preparing for the influx of Trump officials to the city’s dining spots.
After the story ran, Fox News ran its own story following up on her comments and learned she had been fired for what her employer called her “base prejudice.”
“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 told the magazine. “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.”
She said that while she expects most servers will just grin and bear having to serve people they are morally and ideologically opposed to, she hopes that some will make their opposition clear.
“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,” she told the magazine. “But I hope that people still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior.”
Beuchert’s called Van Rooy’s comments to the magazine “unacceptable.”
“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,” the restaurant said in a statement.
As previously reported, a number of incoming Trump officials — and Trump himself — have been accused of sexual misconduct. Elle magazine writer E Jean Carroll was awarded more than $80 million following a defamation trial in which he was found liable for sexual abuse.
Former congressman Matt Gaetz was being investigated by both the Department of Justice and the House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual relations with a minor before he dropped out of consideration for Trump’s Attorney General.
He withdrew his nomination hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter with a 17-year-old girl.
Elon Musk —who has been been tapped by Trump to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” pseudo-agency alongside failed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — has been sued by eight former SpaceX employees over sexual harassment-related allegations.
In the lawsuit, former employees allege Musk “treated women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter.”
Trump’s proposed defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member from the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017, and Robert F Kennedy Jr — Trump’s nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services — has been accused of sexually assaulting a former babysitter in the 1990s.
