Make America grating again

By Brian O'Connor
Updated February 13, 2018
EC: Trump Supporter in Starbucks Has White Privilege Meltdown
Credit: Photo by JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images

Well, we're only a week after one of the most divisive elections in history, and people are already being terrible to one another across the country. Hate crimes are on the rise, bias attacks are happening across the US, and a whole heaping portion of shitty people are using Trump's election to be unabashedly shittier than usual. In one Miami-area Starbucks, a Trump supporter decided to be as proud as possible about his vote for a reality show star who will be the first President to body-slam someone during a WWE match. And by proud, I mean racist and rude. But those two concepts are closer together than they've ever been before. Welcome to the next four years, everyone!

In a candid video (which doesn't show what started the altercation), a Trump supporter in Starbucks is seen screaming at a black employee because the staff was taking too long to make his order. Stomping around in a self-righteous haze, David Sanguesa rails about how Donald Trump is the reason his coffee order (which I'm guessing is a peppermint mocha with whipped cream and three pumps of ignorance) was delayed, and how he shouldn't be forced to wait like a regular, patient, non-racist person for his beverage. Not in Trump's America. Trumpets didn't make crappily drawn Pepes just to suffer these indignities.

Now, we're not talking about a low-level meltdown here. Sanguesa goes all in, blaming the employee for purposely slowing down his day of doing important business and nailing the Johnson account in his cute little vest and dad jeans. He calls the employee "trash," and loudly repeats the word "Trump" a few times instead of forming any kind of cogent argument, let alone full sentences. But as he parades around with his John Tesh haircut, the otherwise normal, rational, and non-racist people in Starbucks put him in his place. Not only do they tell him to STFU, they remind him that Trump's election win doesn't mean that human decency is now a voluntary gesture. Nor is it some kind of salvo for the liberation of racist thoughts.

Thankfully, he piped down when he realized that absolutely no one in the shop had his back. But that's far from the end of the story, as Sanguesa took to the local news to plead his case. The crux of his argument is that the barista "did discrimination [sic] against whites," and that he forgot to take his medication for a mental illness.

In a statement, Starbucks representatives said that "embracing diversity and treating each other with respect and dignity is core to Starbucks values and something our partners take great pride in showing." No word on whether Sanguesa read the Starbucks CEO's election letter in which he called for Americans to come together and stop being awful to one another. But then again, reading isn't a Trumpian virtue anyhow.