Trump Trash Talks Restaurant That Booted Sanders

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday trash-talked a Virginia restaurant that asked his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to leave because she worked for his administration.

The restaurant's co-owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, but she told The Washington Post that her reasons for booting Sanders included the concerns of employees who were gay and knew Sanders had defended Trump's desire to bar transgender people from serving in the military.

Several other Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, have been confronted in public in recent days amid intense fury over an administration policy that led to a spike in the number of migrant children being separated from their parents after crossing the border illegally.

Nielsen cut short a working dinner at a Mexican restaurant last week after protesters shouted, "Shame!" until she left. Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller was accosted by someone at a different Mexican restaurant, who called him "a fascist," according to the New York Post.

The displays of hostility have set off a fierce debate about whether politics should play a role in how administration officials are treated in public, with Sanders's father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, denouncing his daughter's treatment as "bigotry."