Last Updated on November 22, 2023
The Red Hen, a Lexington, Virginia restaurant that became known to many as the “Commie Cluck” after its owner barred Trump Administration Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family from eating there, is closing its doors, apparently becoming just the latest left-wing icon to fall victim to the infamous Trump Curse.
The owners of Lexington, Virginia’s Red Hen restaurant have announced that the business will shutter and a new restaurant with a new name will pop up in its place. The announcement comes several years after The Red Hen faced massive scrutiny for removing Trump Administration Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family from the premises in the middle of their meal after triggered left-wing employees called the restaurant’s left-wing owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, requesting that she take action to remove the family from their midst.
At the time, Wilkinson told The Washington Post that she felt that she’d arrived at “the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
After the removal of the Huckabee-Sanders family, The Red Hen became a destination eatery for DC elites and others on the left but lost the support of locals, with Patriots driving in from all over Virginia to picket the restaurant and alert potential customers of The Red Hen’s anti-American “morals”.
Other restaurants with the same name even went out of business thanks to the reputational damage that Wilkinson and her employees had done.
“While we say goodbye to The Red Hen, its core values will live on,” Red Hen chef Matt Adams told the local media in an article announcing The Red Hen’s closure and eventual replacement. “Our ideals, culinary ethics, and the knowledge we have earned will all be present in everything we touch,” he added.
Out of Touch:
When news of the Commie Cluck’s removal of the Huckabee-Sanders family broke, many expressed their surprise that it had happened in such a conservative region, with Lexington sitting in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, one of the most reliably Republican areas of not just Virginia, but the entire country.
Though Lexington is a small independent city politically dominated by local universities, Rockbridge County, which completely surrounds the city, is deep red and hasn’t supported a Democrat for President since Jimmy Carter narrowly carried it in 1976.
Local election results report that in 2016, 61.88% of the county’s population voted for Donald J. Trump and in 2020, he garnered even more support, raking in 65.37% of the Rockbridge County vote.
It would appear that effectively telling 2/3 of the local population that were no longer welcome at The Red Hen was not the best business decision.
