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WASHINGTON - The owner of the Red Hen, the bistro in Lexington, Virginia, that drew global attention last year after asking then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders to leave, this week said she might do the same thing again if Sanders returned. ~snip

Stephanie Wilkinson is the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, VA. That’s the restaurant that refused service to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders last June. Friday, the Washington Post published a piece in which Wilkinson offers her thoughts on the recent spitting incident involving Eric Trump. You’ll be shocked to learn that Wilkinson is for it (or at least willing to defend it) though it takes her a while to admit it. After recounting what happened to Trump, she writes, “no one in the industry condones the physical assault of a patron.” That seems sensible but we’re...

<p>LEXINGTON, Va. — A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.</p> <p>The Roanoke Times reported Sunday that a regional tourism board is pulling together emergency funds to boost its digital marketing campaign.</p>

LEXINGTON — Rockbridge Regional Tourism approved a recovery plan to boost its marketing after The Red Hen restaurant controversy brought a slew of negative national media coverage this summer. The regional tourism board, with members from Lexington, Buena Vista and Rockbridge County, met with the Lexington City Council on Thursday for an update on tourism initiatives and numbers. The board had initially approved the recovery plan soon after news of The Red Hen controversy was spreading across the country. At the end of June, the restaurant’s owner declined to serve presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she visited the...

A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump's spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The Roanoke Times reported Sunday that a regional tourism board is pulling together emergency funds to boost its digital marketing campaign. Normally that money is saved. But officials agreed the region is in desperate need of positive coverage.

Here are the latest reviews of the Red Hen: Overpriced/not impressed---My wife and I went to move my son into college. This restaurant was close by so we took a chance. The restaurant is old, unappealing and extremely small Arrogant Staff & Dirty Flatware---On a business trip to VA we wanted to dine at a few independently run restaurants with decent reviews. We dined at The Red Hen long before all the controversy in the news, so this review is NOT in any way linked to that event.... Poor food with poor service---An unfortunate dinning experience. The atmosphere is not...

Two weeks after Sarah Sanders' visit, the Red Hen remains closed, its phone reservations number blocked

The Virginia restaurant that made national headlines after its owner asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave reopened on Thursday night after being closed for two weeks due to protests. The Red Hen reopened in Lexington, Va., as dozens of protesters lined up across the street, USA Today reported. "This'll be closed within a year!" one man shouted, according to the newspaper. The restaurant represents a battleground between supporters of the president and those who support the owner's actions, and both protesters and supporters have flocked to The Red Hen in recent days, some hoping for a...

The Lexington restaurant opened its doors for dinner for the first time in nearly two weeks after it gained national attention for refusing to serve White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and asking her to leave.(snip) Trump supporters flocked to the restaurant in protest after news broke, hoping to send the message that people need to “start showing a little respect for the President of the United States,” Grub Street reports.

The co-owner of the Virginia restaurant that refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has resigned from a local business group. News outlets report Stephanie Wilkinson, co-owner of the Red Hen, resigned Tuesday as executive director of Main Street Lexington. […] The Red Hen has not reopened since that night. Protests continue, with one man being escorted away by police after throwing chicken manure. …

The owner of the Virginia restaurant responsible for kicking White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and her family out on Friday evening is stepping aside from leadership of a local business group. Stephanie Wilkinson stepped down as an executive director of Main Street Lexington, an organization tasked with promoting economic viability, Fox News has learned. Elizabeth Outland Branner, the president of the organization, accepted Wilkinson’s resignation Tuesday morning, WSLS reported. “Considering the events of the past weekend, Stephanie felt it best that for the continued success of Main Street Lexington, she should step aside,” Branner wrote in an email. The...

The small Virginia restaurant whose owner asked White House press pecretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave has now become the site of heated political demonstrations. Police in Lexington had to cordon off the portion of the road in front of the Red Hen restaurant, where an estimated 75 protesters brought signs, waved flags, and chanted slogans on Tuesday. One unidentified individual even hurled chicken feces toward the restaurant, which landed on the sidewalk.

Lexington is a politically blue spot surrounded by a sea of red. It went with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 president election by a 2-1 margin. As the burial site of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Lee-Jackson Day festivities stoke strong emotions and debate. “I believe this city is losing its identity,” said Simon Islam, a senior at Washington and Lee University, which is in Lexington. “It’s become too liberal, and it’s had a negative impact.” John Findlay, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia, showed up with a roll of Trump 2020...

The Lexington, Virginia, restaurant that kicked out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday night instantly became the target of online harassment and conspiracy theories, and things have escalated quickly: Owner Stephanie Wilkinson is being doxxed, with users posting her home address and phone number on various message boards and social media platforms. As Vox explains, “Doxxing is a common internet practice used to punish or shame someone and is a particularly common practice among the alt-right and other white supremacist organizations who operate online in places like Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter.” Last year, Reddit shut down three...

LEXINGTON, Va. - Stephanie Wilkinson has resigned from her role with Main Street Lexington, a volunteer-based organization. Elizabeth Outland Branner, the president of the organization, accepted Wilkinson's resignation Tuesday morning.

As a longtime resident of Virginia, I am well aware of its sordid history when it comes to slavery, racism and discrimination. I can still remember "colored only" restrooms, water fountains, poll taxes and African Americans forced to ride in the back of the bus. Virginia public schools in the 1950s were mostly segregated, as they had been since first established in 1870. Segregation was so bad in my home state of Virginia that even Native Americans were largely excluded from public education. It wasn't until 1963, nine years after Brown v. Board of Education, that public schools were open...

Vice reported: The co-owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, has had a hell of a time since she decided to 86 Sarah Huckabee Sanders from her restaurant on Friday, coming under attack from an army of Trump supporters. But despite all the backlash she’s gotten from the right, Stephanie Wilkinson says she doesn’t regret a thing. “I would have done the same thing again,” she told the Washington Post. “We just felt there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions. This appeared to be one.” When Sanders came to the Red Hen with...

Gov. Mike Huckabee said Monday on the Laura Ingraham Show that even after Red Hen restaurant owner Stephanie Wilkinson threw his daughter Sarah Sanders out because she worked for President Donald Trump, she also stoked a protest at a nearby business where some of Sanders’ party had relocated. Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, wrote on Twitter about the incident. “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat...

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

More blame-the-victim from the MSM. On Saturday, we noted Politico accusing Sarah Sanders of an “attack” for having tweeted about being kicked out of the Red Hen. Maggie Haberman of the NYT/CNN did something similar on CNN this morning. She shrugged off the restaurant owner’s ejection of Sanders, while accusing Sanders, by tweeting, of doing something “very, very dangerous.” Haberman:MP> “It’s about as civil a form of incivility as you could have seen . . . Using a government account to tweet to three million followers about the name of the restaurant feels very, very dangerous.”Get the rest of the...