Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is one of several White House staffers publicly confronted over Trump administration policies in recent weeks.
- President Donald Trump is reportedly displeased when his staffers choose not to engage in confrontations with members of the public, according to The Washington Post.
- A number of several prominent White House staffers have been publicly heckled and filmed over Trump administration policies.
- Most have chosen to leave the situations without escalating the conflict, but Trump reportedly wants staffers to take a stand.
President Donald Trump is reportedly displeased with his staffers who choose to "back down" from public confrontations with hecklers, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Over the past several weeks, multiple White House officials have been confronted by protestors in public places, including restaurants, over the Trump administration's controversial "zero-tolerance" immigration policy which resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and White House senior adviser Stephen Miller were both shouted out of Mexican restaurants in DC, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant at the owner's request, and former White House aide Steve Bannon was called a "piece of trash" by a customer in a Virginia book store on Saturday.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was approached by a woman in a DC restaurant urging him to resign - which he later did. The woman, schoolteacher Kristin Mink, later jokingly tweeted "Hey @realDonaldTrump where are you going to lunch tomorrow?"
As the number of these incidents increase and go viral on social media, Trump wants his staffers to take a take a more forceful stand against public hecklers, according to anonymous senior White House officials cited by The Post.
In a June 15th appearance on "Fox & Friends," Trump said that Sanders should have walked out during the White House Correspondents Dinner when comedian Michelle Wolf mocked Sanders during her monologue. White House communications official Mercedes Schlapp did walk out during Wolf's performance.
Other White House officials, however, have been doing just that. The Post also reported that Stephen Miller threw out $80 worth of sushi he had ordered after a bartender at the restaurant flipped him off, and senior White House official Kellyanne Conway has been known to hit back at those who confront her in public.
After an attendee at a Baltimore Orioles game insulted Conway and took a photo of her, she snapped a photo of him, informing him it would go toward her "collection of underachieving men."