Ah, remember the days when the president of the United States didn't get involved in petty arguments with celebrities and small-time business owners over matters that really pale in comparison to, say, a national crisis that involves children being kept in prison-style cages?
Yeah, those were the good times.
Unfortunately, we're not part of that era anymore, and so it's apparently totally normal to log on to social media and witness the so-called leader of the free world nitpicking about a restaurant that refused to serve one of his employees.
We're talking, of course, about an incident that happened last week in which Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, VA because she works for the Trump administration.
In a tweet on Saturday, Sanders said, "Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so".
As could be expected, her tweet caused a stir on the social media platform, and there are currently more than 157,000 comments on her post.
None of them, however, could have been as ludicrous as Trump's opinion on the matter.
In response to Sanders being asked to leave on account of her political affiliations (something the GOP were totally fine with when it concerned a gay couple asking for a wedding cake), the president said:
"The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!"
So, let's get this straight: the president, who has claimed on many occasions that he's too busy to watch TV, took some time out of his day to diss the "paint job" of a small business. Right.
Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the restaurant, originally justified her decision to ask Sanders to leave in an interview with The Washington Post. "I’m not a huge fan of confrontation," she said. "I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals."
It seems that Trump's actions may have actually helped Wilkinson out, though, as his post attracted a lot of attention from people who have said that they will now deliberately visit the Red Hen in protest of the president and his administration.
What's more, he also invited a ton of criticism about the state of cleanliness at his own properties, as Mar-a-Lago was reportedly found to be in violation of 15 health codes upon a recent inspection.
As it turns out, then, it wasn't the best idea for the president to go after a member of the public on Twitter. But he never could have known that, could he?