Steakhouse That Defended Brett Kavanaugh’s ‘Right’ to Dinner Is Being Relentlessly Trolled

Not two weeks after overturning Roe v. Wade, subjecting unsaid numbers of American pregnant people to death by pregnancy complications, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh somehow thought it was a good idea to dine publicly at Morton’s last Wednesday. Morton’s, you’ll note, is an ostensibly classy steakhouse chain—or, as Jezebel’s Kady Ruth Ashcraft put it, “Applebees for people who tuck their shirts in.”

The beer-guzzling justice, of course, was immediately confronted by protesters, forcing him to exit out the back of the premises before he could even order dessert. Morton’s then released a comically out-of-touch statement defending Kavanaugh’s supposed “right” to “eat dinner”—a right not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, so following Kavanaugh’s own logic re: abortion, not a right at all—and calling protesters, rather than the man who legally reduced pregnant people to government incubators, “[selfish] and void of decency.”

Flash forward to Monday, and unlike Kavanaugh, who had to flee before he could order cheesecake, Morton’s is getting its just desserts: The steakhouse is now “being flooded with phone calls and fake reservations,” Insider reports.

One Morton’s employee shared via Instagram story that some of the fake reservations were under names that included “Arnold Benedict,” “Abortion Rights,” and “First Amendment,” according to an Instagram story one employee posted. At another location, fake reservations included “Dick Hertz,” “Amy Coney,” “Neil Gor,” “Kava Naugh,” “Roe Wade,” “Jane Doe” and “Pro Choice.” God, I occasionally love this country.

Over the weekend, Politico obtained an internal memo sent by Morton’s senior vice president and chief of operations, Scott Crain, to employees, in which Crain confirms this crisis: “Currently we are experiencing a massive wave (trending at #2 on social media now) of negative response to our comments yesterday as well as being bombarded at the local level with phone calls and fake reservations on Open Table.” He continues:

“I am making you aware of this because there is a good chance that your restaurants will also potentially have some people reaching out for comment and/or making (bogus) reservations over the next few days. As I stated yesterday, our comment is always ‘No Comment.’ We don’t respond, we don’t retweet, we don’t post on Instagram or Facebook, we don’t do anything.”

We’ve said this before, when protesters were gathering outside Justices’ homes and chalking Sen. Susan Collins’ sidewalk, and we’ll say it again: Extremely wealthy, powerful people who are actively stripping us of our human rights and making our planet unlivable do not deserve a single moment’s peace. If you think confronting public officials about their own actions and policy decisions uprooting our lives is “void of decency,” but the government forcing people to be pregnant isn’t, then you value the comfort of wealthy elites with blood on their hands over pregnant and marginalized people’s lives.

While pregnant people in the handful of states that have immediately banned abortion scramble to find care and scrape together the funds to afford it, abortion providers fear prison time, and a 10-year-old rape victim endures the trauma of being forced to travel out-of-state for an abortion, some well-earned trolling is the very fucking least Morton’s deserves for its cowardly support for Kavanaugh. Trust me, they will survive a call or two from “Dick Hertz,” or (my personal favorite) “Brett Kunt.”

If you’re currently trying to participate in some of the Morton’s trolling yourself, you might find the Washington, D.C., Morton’s restaurant where Kavanaugh dined has currently paused customer reviews on its Yelp page. Perhaps consider trying another way to really stick it to them—like, say, donating to an abortion fund or independent clinic?