Let the Trump folks eat their dinner, Democrats
Leaving their work at the office has become a bigger challenge for President Donald Trump's top officials.
Last Friday night, for example, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, before she and her family had finished their cheese plate appetizers -- because, she was told, she works for "an inhumane and unethical administration." At least, according to news reports, they weren't charged for the cheese plate.
Earlier that day, protesters outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen blasted a recording of crying migrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.
A couple of nights before that, chanting protesters from the Democratic Socialists of America, reportedly tipped off by other diners, caused Nielsen to leave dinner early at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.
The New York Post reported earlier that day that Stephen Miller, President Trump's senior adviser behind the "zero-tolerance" policy, had been called a "fascist" earlier in the week at another Mexican restaurant in the city. Miller didn't respond to the harassment, the Post said, and he didn't leave either.
I would be lying if I didn't admit to a profound feeling that Team Trump had it coming, not for their political beliefs but for their actual implementation of a policy that -- as the world has witnessed -- recklessly separated more than 2,000 kids from their parents without a plan for how those families might ever be reunited.
That's how our proudly unpredictable president operates. He gets a notion, perhaps while watching a morning show on his beloved Fox News Channel, and everyone else involved has to move heaven and earth to make his notion happen.
Or, as Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who's not running again so he can speak freely, described Trump's implementation of the new immigration policy, "ready, fire, aim."
However, my better judgment says for a number of reasons, nah, let 'em eat in peace. To avoid risking a backlash, Democrats and other progressives should leave the rude politics to specialists, like Trump, who often conducts his job like a troll in chief.
I can't go along with Rep. Maxine Waters' call for more harassment of Trump administration officials, even with the noble aim of protesting an inhumane immigration policy.
...continued
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
