A Virginia bookstore owner is facing a major backlash and boycott campaign after he phoned police because a woman called former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon a “piece of trash.”
The owner of Black Swan Books in Richmond, VA, Nick Cooke, says he called 911 on Saturday after a woman confronted Bannon in the store who was “simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business.”
“I asked her to leave, and she wouldn’t. And I said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t,’ and I went to call the police and she left,” Cooke told The Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening,” he added.
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Following the Richmond Times publication, Steve Bannon began trending on Twitter with many people calling for a boycott of the store. Cooke was accused of siding with a “white supremacist.”
Bannon, who reportedly grew up in Richmond, is the latest associate of President Donald Trump to be accosted in a public place. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was recently asked to leave a restaurant, while Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been confronted by protesters, due to their association with the administration.