A Michigan minor who refused to serve customers whose clothing expressed support for President Donald Trump says those same adults filmed her without her consent.
Janiyah Williams claimed she “refused service to Trump supporters, who recorded me as a minor without permission,” according to a GoFundMe that raised $415 as of 2 PM Eastern Time on Monday. Williams added that after the couple posted the video she received “hundreds of hate comments and threats” so that her job at Smoothie King was “no longer safe to return to.”
Smoothie King, responding to the incident on Monday, expressed sympathy with the pro-Trump couple.
"Smoothie King has zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, including political affiliation,” Smoothie King’s representatives explained in a statement. “We were deeply concerned to learn of an incident involving a guest who was refused service at a franchised location in Michigan yesterday, Sunday, late afternoon. That is not the experience we want for anyone who walks through our doors.”
The woman and her husband complained that, after walking into a Smoothie King in Ann Arbor while the husband wore a pro-Trump sweatshirt, the clerk refused to serve them. Her post was shared on X by Leftism and Meme’nOnLibs, with the video receiving more than 276,000 as of 12 PM Eastern Time on Monday.
"She refused to serve customers at @SmoothieKing because the husband wore a Trump hoodie," Leftism said in their post. "She has now made a GoFundMe in which she boasts about refusing to serve Trump supporters, and claims that she was filmed without permission, is a minor, and now has a lot of hate comments."
Leftism added: "I expect @gofundme to take proper action and not allow her to raise money off of discriminating against others. She also posted videos doubling on what she did, saying that 'this is good vs evil, we need to stand up,' and is calling for people to report the original video on Facebook, claiming that it was 'taken without permission' and takes issue with a lot of the commenters being white."
The pro-Trump movement has often used fashion to express itself politically. Additionally, the pro-Trump movement tends to object to fashion that is explicitly anti-Trump, as evidenced in May when Wisconsin State Assembly member Ron Tusler (R) called a hearing of the Assembly Judiciary Committee into recess to forcibly remove a spectator whose hat said "F--- Trump Viva Mexico."
“In response to wearing a hat that he found ‘offensive,’ Rep. Ron Tusler just called the police to have a someone removed rather than hearing his testimony,” Democratic Assembly member Ryan Clancy later wrote. “Rep Tusler called a recess and left, and so did the Capitol Police when they showed up. The next item, appropriately, also deals with the trampling of First Amendment rights.”
In part because of these reasons, many critics claim the Trump movement is similar to a cult.
“This is what America looks like when one of our two major political parties has become an authoritarian-embracing cult,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) wrote on his Substack last week. “And I’ll throw in for good measure — hey, MAGA, MAGA — this is what America looks like when the people who voted for Donald Trump don’t get what Donald Trump said he would give them, but they still praise him to the high heavens.”
