Red Hen DC Tormented By Misinformed Twitter Users

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Twitter firestorm that erupted after a restaurant in rural Virginia declined service to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has ensnared a Bloomingdale eatery of the same name. And despite efforts to clarify that the Red Hen in D.C. has absolutely no affiliation with the Red Hen in Lexington -- three hours away -- people on Twitter just aren't getting the message.

It all started when Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that she was asked to leave the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, due to her affiliation with the Trump Administration, and called out the restaurant by name on her official Twitter account on Saturday.

President Trump joined in the fray Monday morning, also calling out the Red Hen -- although unlike Sanders, he didn't specify it was the Red Hen located in rural Virginia, not the one in the Bloomingdale neighborhood. And that restaurant is paying the price online.

If you thought it would be enough for the Red Hen to simply hop online and post a quick message pointing out that despite sharing the same name, they have zero relationship with the restaurant in question, you'd be wrong. The Red Hen tried that Saturday morning soon after Sanders' post, and it didn't work.

You have to be affiliated somehow or you couldn't have the same name.
DC?
— GiGi (@GGgirl34) June 24, 2018

Please make a public statement condemning her action and welcoming all Americans to all your other branches...
— Mazin Al-Eshaiker (@MazinAlEshaiker) June 23, 2018

Doesn't matter. I can't see myself ever going to eat at a Red Hen now.
— Dave (Crash) Stevens (@ultralitigator) June 24, 2018

Sorry this comment is not going to work; if a McDonald’s anywhere in the US does something bad, you won’t see them making this argument since they are benefiting from the franchise monetarily; you made the choice to have a franchised locations & now you have to live with it
— Mike Boudreau (@mikeboudreau) June 24, 2018

Red Hen DC's problems only appear to be getting worse. The restaurant reportedly has been egged and "is getting death threats," according to Washingtonian food editor Jessica Sidman.

Red Hen DC is not the only restaurant suffering from this flap. A Red Hen in New Jersey has been threatened as well, with the operating manager telling Patch on Sunday that "the calls haven't stopped," with about 100 calls over a six-hour span on Saturday afternoon. One caller even threatened to burn the restaurant down.

It's the second time in the last two years that a popular D.C. restaurant has been the subject of death threats and partisan attacks over something they had absolutely nothing to do with. Comet Ping Pong, a pizza joint in Northwest, was targeted after a hoax that Hillary Clinton was personally running a child sex ring in their non-existent basement caught fire on right-wing sites -- a conspiracy theory that continues to this day. It even prompted a man armed with a rifle to walk into the restaurant in December 2016, firing off a shot that led to his arrest.

Image via Google Maps