A black Trump supporter and his family were allegedly threatened and racially harassed by a group of employees at a Cheesecake Factory in Miami, Florida, on Mother’s Day, terrifying a little girl at the table and forcing the family to retreat from the restaurant, The Daily Wire reported.
EXCLUSIVE: Cheesecake Factory Employees Attack Black Man For Wearing MAGA Hat https://t.co/m6HvEICTD6
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 15, 2018
The fracas reportedly began when a female employee saw 22-year-old Eugenior Joseph’s red “Make America Great Again” hat and gathered about a dozen other staffers to come over and harangue him.
“Her finger was literally on top of his head, we were all looking at her like ‘what is happening?'” a witness told The Daily Wire. “She was pointing at him, calling her other coworkers, telling them to look at this guy wearing a Make America Great Again hat.”
According to Izabella Victores, Joseph’s girlfriend, the employees allegedly circled his table and made threatening comments like, “I’m gonna punch his head in so hard that I’ll knock the hat off.” She said that they also started chanting that Joseph should be kicked out of the restaurant.
Joseph told The Daily Wire that one employee was particularly menacing, standing behind him “balling his fists, smacking his fists” in an attempt to intimidate him. At one point, he got up to the use the restroom and staff members reportedly yelled and booed at him as he returned to his table.
“I got up and went to the restroom, my girlfriend followed me, and as we were walking back, a group of [the employees] came out from the back and they just started clapping and yelling, and just screaming things at me,” Joseph said. This was corroborated by another witness, who said that the employees in the kitchen booed loudly as Joseph walked by.
According to witnesses, some of the employees even referred to Joseph as a “n**ger” throughout the ordeal.
A witness told The Daily Wire that the employees “looked like a lynch mob and they couldn’t stand to see a black man wearing a hat that showed support for the president.”
One of the witnesses said that the event was so traumatic and threatening that an elderly woman who was present had to take medication to calm herself down.
Multiple witnesses said that as the family exited the restaurant the manager followed them out and told them that some of the employees admitted to their actions and that one of the employees had been sent home.
As the family left the restaurant they ran into police that had been called to the scene who documented the incident in the police report but supposedly did not file any charges, according to multiple witnesses.
There are video clips and photos from the incident that have not been made public, but The Daily Wire has viewed a number of them and reports that they validate the claims made by the witnesses.
One of the photos showed one of the men described by the witnesses as being the one who made the threatening hand gestures, making the fist bump with another employee, which was described by at least three witnesses.
Another video reviewed by The Daily Wire showed a young girl crying at the table, afraid of the hostile environment created by The Cheesecake Factory employees.
Another video showed the family leaving the restaurant and speaking to multiple law enforcement officials who arrived on scene. The video shows Joseph in a state of disbelief over what had just unfolded as other witnesses were visibly angry over the way he had been treated.
Victores said on Facebook that the police were called, however it’s not clear who made the call. According to The Daily Wire, the police arrived at the scene as the family was exiting the restaurant and the family apparently did not file any charges.
The Cheesecake Factory said in a tweet that it is taking the matter very seriously and is investigating the incident. The company has suspended the employees involved pending the investigation and said that they “immediately apologized to the guests in person.”
No guest should ever feel unwelcome in one of our restaurants and we are taking this matter very seriously. Upon learning of this incident, we immediately apologized to the guests in person. The individuals involved have been suspended pending the results of our investigation.
— The Cheesecake Factory 🍰 (@Cheesecake) May 15, 2018
However, according to The Daily Wire, Joseph said that he had not heard from anyone at The Cheesecake Factory about what had happened inside the restaurant.
Joseph told The Daily Wire that he is new to politics and wears the hat because he thinks Trump “is a really good president” and expressed disappointment that “a black man can’t wear a hat to support the president without being attacked.”
Joseph is by no means alone. Since the 2016 campaign, Trump supporters have faced taunts and even assaults for daring to show their support for the MAGA agenda in public. The largely unreported attacks against Trump supporters spiked in the days and weeks after the 2016 election. The incidents have waned, but there are still ugly anti-Trump altercations occasionally hitting the news.
Just last month in Texas, a group of teenage girls were berated in a cookie shop because one of them was wearing a pro-Trump T-shirt. Kellye Burke, a Texas councilwoman and member of the anti-gun group “Moms Demand Action,” was charged with disorderly conduct after she allegedly screamed obscenities and berated the girls as they were waiting in line at “Tiny’s Milk and Cookies” in West University Place, Texas.
Another ugly anti-Trump incident occurred last month at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., when a pair of black females brutally attacked a 29-year-old woman who professed to be a supporter of the president.
“This was a nasty attack,” reported Fox 5 DC’s Linda Watts. “The police report is even calling it a suspected hate crime.”
If the incident at the Miami Cheesecake Factory occurred as reported, it certainly looks like a “hate crime,” as well.
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