Angie Ugarte: Owner of DeBary Diner bans Joe Biden supporters
Supporters of President Joe Biden are not welcome at a Florida diner in the wake of the tragic suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members in Afghanistan.
The DeBary diner in Charles Richard Beall Blvd, DeBary, has posted a sign on its window telling prospective customers to turn around if they support Biden and his administration following last week's ISIS-K attack at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan. “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,” th notice bluntly states.
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Speaking to WOFL, owner Angie Ugarte said she posted the sign on Thursday, August 26, after the suicide bombing that also claimed the lives of nearly 200 Afghans. According to the station, Ugarte intends to keep up the sign as long as American citizens are stranded in Afghanistan following the completion of the US withdrawal from the war-torn nation.
“It was the only thing I felt like I could do,” Ugarte told Fox 35 Orlando. “I was just angry. I was just let down. I felt like one of those mothers, or wives, or sisters who were gonna get that knock on the door.”
She said that a lot of her regular customers are military vets. The diner, which prides itself in making the “tastiest” Cuban sandwiches in town, has dedicated a wall to “Our Local Heroes,” with photos of service members, flags, stars and stripes decor, military insignia, and a “USA” sign. "They have coffee every morning,” Ugarte told WOFL of the local vets.
However, she admitted that the reaction from customers has been mixed. “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.’”
Nonetheless, Ugarte has declared that the 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 added.
Florida restaurant owner tells Biden supporters to "take business elsewhere" https://t.co/7c7j2LxVKL pic.twitter.com/KvFsH1n1S9
— The Hill (@thehill) August 31, 2021
Fox 35 Orlando reported that people had mixed feelings too. "I wouldn’t go there. I don’t appreciate it," resident Louis Vasquez told the station, while Serenity Smith said that Ugarte "has the right to not let anybody in the restaurant that supports a certain view."
According to the Orlando Sentinel, 2,448 US service members were killed in Afghanistan through April in America's longest war effort, which concluded on Monday. Biden became the fourth president over two decades of war to stand at attention at Dover Air Force Base to witness the remains of fallen soldiers from Afghanistan return home.
That said, out of the 13 US service members killed in last week's suicide bombing, 11 were Marines, one was a Navy sailor, and one an Army soldier. The dead were aged between 20 to 31, with some of them born not long before the September 11, 2001 attacks that spurred the United States to launch a mission in Afghanistan against al-Qaida and dismantle their Taliban hosts who were ruling the country since 1996, the Sentinel reported.