D.C. Restaurant Sues Trump, Trump Hotel for 'Stealing' Their Business

The "Women's March" on the day following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, on January 21, 2017. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones) (Sipa via AP Images)

Businesses rise and businesses fall. In fact, most businesses fall.

Running a business is hard, and often depends on factors you don’t really understand until everything is said and done. Meanwhile, you spend a great deal of time trying to do things to make your business thrive that they never cover in business courses.

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But we’re pretty sure this wine bar in D.C. suing President Trump for lost business should know they don’t have a case here:

A Washington, D.C. wine bar is suing President Donald Trump, arguing that the restaurant inside his eponymous hotel is stealing business away.

The husband-and-wife duo who own Cork Wine Bar announced their lawsuit Thursday against Trump himself and the LLC that runs the $212 million Trump International Hotel, opened in 2016 near the White House.

Khalid Pitts and Diane Gross claim that the hotel — which sits 1.5 miles away from their restaurant and includes a steakhouse and full bar — has an unfair advantage in attracting diners. The Trump name has attracted hungry politicos to the hotel, who may see dining there as a way to get close to the president, they say.

“We have events we do here for elected officials, nonprofits, foreign dignitaries, the World Bank, law firms,” Gross told the Washington Post. “Those folks are now being courted to come and want to go there because they see it as advantageous to them to curry favor with the president.”

So people think they can curry favor with Trump by having events at a hotel that he has divested management of, and it’s Trump’s fault? Keep in mind that no one is telling them that dining at Trump International will gain them any preferential treatment. They are people freely choosing where to eat.

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Unsurprisingly, Gross identifies as a Democrat — and Pitts has worked for progressive causes.

That leads one to wonder: is this lawsuit by a restaurant over a mile away — is there really no other place to get steak in a dense urban area? — really about the free market?

Or are these progressive business owners just sending out a “WE HATE TRUMP EAT HERE” bat signal?

Virtue signaling, when your customers live in an overwhelmingly Leftist area, sounds like good advertising. “Trump is destroying my business” sounds like a heck of a way to drum up business, even if you’re wasting the court’s time with a frivolous suit.

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