A black man wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat refused to let the matter go after a waitress at Hooters asked him if he was a Trump supporter and then walked away without taking the order.
“Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I want to point something out to ya’ll. Can I get all ya’lls attention for a second? Ya’ll see that young lady right there,” he said in a video he recorded moments after the incident, while pointing to a waitress.
“That’s Shay. She’s the waitress for Hooters. Shay walked up to me, saw my hat and said, ‘Are you a Trump supporter?’ Whilst on her job.”
When he said he had voted for Trump, she left without taking the order.
Tommy Sotomayor, based in Arizona, is a radio and internet talk show host who has a presence on Youtube. He comments on social issues and politics. It is unclear as to when and where the incident occurred, but a video was posted on his youtube channel on Jan. 13 showing six and a half minutes of moments following the incident.
Sotomayor explained that one of his acquaintances was about to order a drink from Shay, but when Shay saw his MAGA hat, she ended up not taking the order.
“This brother was just trying to buy me a drink. And he told her can she get him a drink. She saw my hat, and the hat was offensive [to her],” Sotomayor explained.
“All I wanted to show ya’ll is that most of the time when ya’ll see me doing these videos, you think I’m making [expletive] up. I’m not. This is real world stuff.”
Sotomayor also performs at shows and had just finished a nearby show before the incident, according to political news site BizPac Review. As such, the people who he walked to and spoke to during the video were some of his fans who had decided to hang out with him after the show.
“I don’t care what kind of hat I had on, if you are servicing the people would you then look at a person and say “Do you support Trump?’” he recounted to the group earlier.
Several in the group expressed support for what Sotomayor had to say.
Sotomayor continued to express indignation at the incident and proceeded to seek the manager to tell him the story.
He walked to the manager and told him: “You have an individual who’s a waitress here, who got upset at me. Not because I said anything. You know what she got mad at me about?” he asked, paused, and pointed to his hat.
“She started talking crap to me and my table because of a freakin’ hat,” Sotomayor said.
The manager then called over the waitress. “Shay, I would wear that hat, why are you making fun of that hat?”
“I didn’t make fun of your hat,” Shay told Sotomayor. “I said, “Are you a Trump supporter?” That’s it. All I asked was one question.”
“No, you made it an issue,” Sotomayor responded while indicating that the scene had been witnessed by several people. “All the audience over here saw it. All these people I brought. Look at how she’s being disrespectful.”
The manager later said, “I’m a big Trump supporter.”
He later told Sotomayor, “I’ll pull her aside and have a little talk with her. She’s actually a sweetheart, I’ve never had a problem with her. But I guess we hit a sticking point with her—as we normally do!”
The exchange ended in laughter.
Sotomayor reiterated his point before the video ends: “Your hat should not make a person decide that they’re not going to do their job.”