Florida diner owner posts sign telling Biden backers to eat elsewhere
The owner of a Florida diner is telling President Biden supporters they’re personae non grata in the wake of the suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members in Afghanistan.
A sign posted in the window of the DeBary Diner flatly tells would-be customers to turn around if they back Biden and his administration following Thursday’s attack by ISIS-K at the Kabul airport, WOFL reported.
“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere,” the blunt notice reads.
Angie Ugarte, who has owned the restaurant in DeBary for five years, said she posted the sign Thursday after the suicide bombing that also killed nearly 200 Afghans. She intends to keep it up as long as Americans are stranded in Afghanistan, WOFL reported.
“It was the only thing I felt like I could do,” Ugarte told the station. “I was just angry; I was just let down. I felt like one of those mothers or wives or sisters who were going to get that knock on the door.”
Ugarte said a lot of her regular customers at the diner — which boasts the “tastiest” Cuban sandwiches in town, according to its website — are military vets. An entire wall inside is devoted to service members featuring military photos, flags and other décor, video shows.
“They have coffee every morning,” Ugarte said of the local vets.
Reaction from customers, however, has been mixed, Ugarte said.
“I’ve had people come to the door and look at it and turn around and walk away,” she told WOFL. “And I’ve had people come into my kitchen while I’m cooking and say, ‘Hey, I like your sign.’”
Regardless of the response it causes, Ugarte said the plain-spoken poster is there to stay for now.
“If you really, really still stand behind what’s allowed this to happen in the way that it has happened — which was unnecessary — then I really, really don’t want to be associated with you in any way and I certainly don’t want your business,” she continued.
But at least one Florida man told the station he was put off by the sign and wouldn’t be sitting at a table anytime soon.
“I wouldn’t go there,” DeBary resident Louis Vasquez told WOFL. “I don’t appreciate it.”
Multiple calls to the diner by The Post went unanswered Tuesday afternoon as its line was busy. A message seeking comment from the White House was not immediately returned.
