Tipsheet

What Happened to 'Bake the Cake'? Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Booted From Arkansas Eatery Over Politics.

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  March 20, 2026 9:00 AM

In 2018, then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was eating at the Red Hen in Lexington when the owners asked her to leave because of her politics. It was a huge controversy (and not to be confused with the September incident when President Trump and those who were with him were harassed by protesters at the D.C. eatery with the same name).

That Red Hen location closed permanently in 2023.

Now, an Arkansas eatery has started the clock on its own closure after asking Governor Huckabee Sanders to leave their establishment, again over her politics.

Here's more:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas and former White House press secretary, says she was having lunch with two mom friends at a restaurant called The Croissanterie in Little Rock when the owner kicked them out. Her presence at the restaurant, the owner told the governor, made the employees feel “threatened and uncomfortable” because of her political views. As they left, she was given the middle finger.


This is the second time Sanders has found herself in this exact situation. Back in 2018 when she was White House press secretary, it made national news when a small Virginia restaurant called the Red Hen told her she and her family to leave because she worked for Donald Trump. The incident won the owner of the restaurant profiles from liberal media like the Washington Post, which hailed the owner for “taking a stand” against Sanders.

That restaurant permanently closed in 2023.

Some said the Red Hen reopened under another name, in case you want to avoid dining there if you're in Lexington.

The owners of The Croissanterie realize they live and work in Arkansas, right? Since 1968, the state has only voted nationally for Democrats three times: once for Jimmy Carter and twice for former Governor Bill Clinton. The GOP has won the state consistently for the last quarter of a century.

Soon-to-be former owners, you mean.

We know that. Leftists do not.

And some of them are genuinely horrible people, politics aside.

Governor Huckabee Sanders addressed it, too.

"Arkansans are known for their warm hospitality, and while that restaurant didn’t meet that standard, my administration will continue to focus on lifting Arkansans up, not tearing others down," she wrote on X.

Soon it will be "proud af to be unemployed."

No one should ever eat there again.

Yes, it is.

Leftists were the ones who attacked bakeries and other businesses that wouldn't make them cakes, insisting businesses were public accommodations that couldn't discriminate. But those rules were never meant to apply to them, of course. But if you're in Little Rock, there are lots of other dining options.