President Donald Trump suggested on Twitter that the Red Hen “focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows.” | Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump berates Red Hen after restaurant asks Huckabee Sanders to leave

President Donald Trump lashed out Monday at a Virginia restaurant that refused to serve his press secretary over the weekend, suggesting that it “focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows.”

“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 online. “I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”


White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter over the weekend that she had been asked to leave The Red Hen, a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, “because I work for @POTUS.” She wrote that the restaurant owner’s request says “far more about her than about me.”

Sanders’ tweet set off a firestorm of criticism on social media and beyond.

Stephanie Wilkinson, the restaurant’s co-owner, told The Washington Post that the decision to ask Sanders and her party to leave the restaurant followed discussions with staff, including some who are gay and oppose the Trump administration decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Wilkinson said she believes Sanders works in an "inhumane and unethical" administration.

The restaurant co-owner said Sanders and her party offered to pay for cheese boards that had already been delivered to the table, but that the restaurant comped the food.

The restaurant, which is closed Mondays, did not immediately respond for comment.