President Donald Trump roasted California Rep. Maxine Waters on Monday after she incited supporters to "create a crowd" to "push back" against members of the Trump administration.
"She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement," he added. "Be careful what you wish for Max!"
Trump sent the message on the heels of a string of incidents in which his cabinet members were harassed and ousted from public venues. In the month of June alone, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and White House Advisor Stephen Miller were harassed and forced to leave restaurants in separate incidents.
The harassment isn't new to Trump cabinet members, allies, and supporters. Since the president was elected, his staff, family, allies, and supporters have all been subject to similar provocation and badgering. Waters pushed that trend to a new level by openly calling on her supporters to confront Trump's team in public.
"Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and 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,” the congresswoman shouted. “And you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”
The day before Waters's speech, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked Sanders and her family members to leave after they had already been served appetizers. Sanders agreed and departed, but the cold shoulder from the eatery didn't go unnoticed.
A restaurant employee posted about it on Facebook, triggering an internet firestorm. The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, asked Sanders to leave out of "moral conviction" the employee wrote.
Sanders addressed the incident in a press briefing at the White House on Monday, June 25.
"I was asked to leave because I work for President Trump. We're allowed to disagree, but we should be allowed to do so freely and without fear of harm and this goes for all people regardless of politics," Sanders said.
"Some have chosen to push hate and vandalism against the restaurant that I was asked to leave from. A Hollywood actor publicly encouraged people to kidnap my children," she added. "Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important but the calls for harassment and the push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."
Trump supporters flooded The Red Hen's review page on Yelp with thousands of negative comments, tanking the restaurant's rating. The backlash even harmed eponymous restaurants in New Jersey and Washington, forcing the owners to post statements on social media clarifying that they are not affiliated with The Red Hen in Lexington.
Trump stood up for his secretary on Monday morning and lambasted The Red Hen for refusing to serve Sanders because she worked for his administration.
"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," Trump wrote. "I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!"
The number of recent instances of harassment and Waters's public call for people to form crowds to "push back" Trump team members is starting to look like a coordinated strategy. Hours before the Red Hen incident, liberal MSNBC contributor Donny Deutch compared Trump voters to Nazis. Waters appeared on MSNBC the same day.
"I want to tell you, these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they won’t be able to go to a restaurant, they won’t be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store," Waters said.
"The people are going to turn on them," she added. "They’re going to protest. They’re absolutely going to harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’"
On June 19, chanting protesters forced Nielsen, the Homeland Security Secretary, to leave a Mexican restaurant. A group also showed up in front of Nielsen's home playing audio of crying children and chanting "no justice, no sleep."
On June 17, a protester chased Miller, a key Trump advisor, out of a Mexican restaurant and called him a "fascist."
Top-level cabinet members aren't the only ones facing harassment. Anti-Trump professor Sam Lavigne posted the public profiles of 1,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees online on June 19. Twitter, Github, and Medium, the three online platforms Lavigne used, took down the content, but not before it was widely viewed and shared.
A History of Harassment
Politically motivated harassment against the Trump administration, Republicans, and conservatives is not a new phenomenon.“Whip Scalise knows firsthand the dangerous consequences that can result from making political differences personal and vitriolic,” Lauren Fine, the spokeswoman for Scalise told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We are lucky to live in a country where we have the right to freely debate our differences civilly," she added. "Harassment is never an acceptable method of disagreement.”
Months later, in November, protesters left signs outside the home of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai which included the names of his children, along with messages protesting the rollback of Net Neutrality.