
Shaming works, y'all. After a spate of recent articles drew attention to a DC bar and hotel that have become a gathering place for the Proud Boys and assorted pro-Trump riffraff, the hotel has announced that it will be closed during next week's planned rally to disrupt the certification of the election.
Here's the notice posted on the Hotel Harrington's website today.
Washington, D.C. has been our home for 106 years and we join with all of our guests, visitors, staff and neighbors in our concern and desire for everyone's health and safety. We greatly appreciate the trust our guests have placed in Hotel Harrington over the years and we wish to continue to earn that trust.
While we cannot control what happens outside of the hotel, we are taking additional steps to protect the safety of our visitors, guests and employees.
Hotel Harrington will be closed on January 4, 5 and 6. We will not be accommodating guests, with the exception of our long-term residents who call our hotel home. Refunds will be made for all pre-paid reservations. Notifications are being sent to all reservation-holders beginning today.
The earth is healing.
On December 12, Trump's supporters rallied in the capital to complain about living in a democracy where their guy wasn't allowed to "win" despite receiving 7 million fewer votes. That evening as pro- and anti-Trump forces clashed in the streets, four people —including at least one member of the Proud Boys — were stabbed near Harry's Bar, which is in the basement of the Harrington Hotel.
Here's how the Washington Post reported the incident on December 13:
Police said in a statement that [alleged perpetrator Phillip] Johnson got into an argument with someone that escalated. Based on a video, the police report says Johnson pulled out a knife after he was pushed in the back. The report says another person repeatedly pulled on Johnson's mask, at which point one of the victims and another person punched Johnson in the head several times.
That day, Washingtonian got the ball rolling with a piece called "What Is the Deal With Harry's Bar?" noting that restaurant on the ground floor of the historic Hotel Harrington had become a home away from home for the low-rent MAGA crowd who can't afford the expensive drinks or rooms at the nearby Trump Hotel. The bar had been fined $2,000 for two separate violations of COVID restrictions in one weekend in November when the Proud Boys set up camp there and flouted mask and crowd size rules.
"For us, it's more of an after-hours place. After the Trump [hotel] closes, we'll typically end up there if we're going to have a late night," Trump weenus Harlan Hill told reporter Jessica Sidman in November. "You'll see familiar faces: other people who do Fox, some congressmen, but it's not as common as at the Trump."
Hill, who threatened to open up a can of whoopass on Philadelphia after Trump lost Pennsylvania, was actually banned from Fox in November after he called Vice President elect Kamala Harris an "insufferable lying bitch." Also, he looks like this.
Politico got its digs in on December 14, in a piece describing Harry's Bar as "a sort of all-purpose MAGA mecca, a place where Trump's faithful from around the country can gather during their occasional pilgrimages to the capital." They didn't exactly describe the clientele as a bunch of inbred hicks from the hinterland, huddled together in the one, cheap dive in the city willing to sell them $6 Budweisers and let them crash for $100 a night — but they didn't NOT say it either.
In the twilight hours of the first Million MAGA March on November 14, the Proud Boys' bravado was on full display at Harry's. Groups of scowling men in tactical vests milled around, eating popcorn, drinking pitchers of beer and trading war stories from past rallies. The crowd spilled onto the outdoor patio, where a vendor was selling American flags and Trump knickknacks from the back of a trailer. Many wore MAGA hats. Few wore masks. At one point, a group gathered in the street in front of Harry's to unfurl a massive "Thin Blue Line" flag with "TRUMP" emblazoned across the top in oversize block letters. A handful of Proud Boys ran under the flag while its handlers sent ripples across the surface, like toddlers at some sort of beer-soaked jamboree.
Subtle.
Then yesterday the Post brought the establishment to national attention in a piece describing large crowds of unmasked Proud Boys "[w]earing their signature black and gold colors" while "drinking openly and chanting on the street in front of the hotel" late into the night of December 12. They also managed to get the group's leader Enrique Tarrio on record admitting that he participated in tearing Black Lives Matter banners off local churches and burning them in front of the hotel the evening of the protest.
That appears to have done the trick for the Hotel Harrington, at least, which issued the statement saying it will be closed during next week's planned protests. As for Harry's Bar, which rents space from the hotel and is operated separately, it finds itself squarely in the sights of both its neighbors and local government.
"I am angered and troubled by the violence committed by white supremacists in our city and in Ward 2 over the weekend and last month," DC Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D), who represents the bar's ward, told the Post . "Harry's disregard for public health guidance as these hate groups have gathered in their establishment without masks and without being socially distant before taking to the streets and further jeopardizing the health and safety of District residents is absolutely unacceptable."
Meanwhile, whichever Proud Boys booked rooms at the Harrington for the planned "stop the steal" rally next week are shit out of luck. Guess they'll have to fork over the $3600 per night to stay at the Trump hotel, which just jacked its rates for those dates, according to Mediaite . Or those fine fellows can come back the week of the inauguration, since Trump's garbage palace has just "unlocked" those dates.
Because who doesn't love a good wake, amirite?
[ WaPo / Washingtonian / Politico / WaPo ]
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Blocked and flagged, unless you can prove sarcasm. But with 170 comments, you're a trolletteski.
I just find it funny they admit they aren't men.