Steve Bannon Called "Piece of Trash" by Heckler in Virginia Bookstore

The police were called after a woman confronted the former White House chief strategist while shopping for books in his hometown.

The owner of a bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, said he contacted the police after a woman in his store verbally confronted former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and called him a "piece of trash," according to a report Saturday in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“Steve Bannon was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business. I asked her to leave, and she wouldn’t. And I said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t,’ and I went to call the police and she left,” Nick Cooke, the owner of Black Swan Books, told the Times-Dispatch. “And that’s the end of the story.”

Bannon grew up in the Richmond area.

The harassment is the latest to occur to a former or current member of President Donald Trump's administration, as last week former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was confronted by a woman in a Washington, D.C., restaurant. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also was recently asked to exit a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, and Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled in June at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.

Following the harassment of Nielsen, California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters said, "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. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere. We've got to get the children connected to their parents."

Waters' comments were criticized by many, including Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, for inciting harassment.

“We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening,” Cooke said of the incident with Bannon.