After that ludicrous fake-news story last fall that claimed the Clinton campaign was secretly enslaving children in the backrooms, inspiring a North Carolina man to drive into D.C. and shoot up the restaurant, what Comet Ping Pong definitely did not need was a visit from Hillary Clinton. For months after the conspiracy started circulating online, things remained so toxic that totally unrelated pizza establishments, like Roberta's all the way up in Brooklyn, even got death threats from idiots. But the New York Daily Newsreports that one of Comet's neighbors revealed yesterday that Hillary and Bill did what they could to support the pizzeria — quickly, but also very quietly — in the days after the attack.
"You responded instantly and were so supportive … You and your husband said, 'What can we do to support Comet?'" the owner of Politics and Prose, a popular Beltway bookstore that's Comet's neighbor, said during an event yesterday for Clinton's What Happenedbook tour. "You bought I don't know how many pizzas, but a lot of pizzas, and sent them … to an after-school literacy program in D.C., which was never publicized."
Comet had been a popular family hangout in D.C.'s Chevy Chase neighborhood for years. But besides probably scaring customers away, the Edgar Maddison Welch incident caused actual damages to the restaurant (he fired his AR-15 into a door and some computers on his hunt for child sex slaves), and it forced owner James Alefantis to hire security to stand guard at the door. They managed to raise $28,000 on GoFundMe to cover part of these costs, but the rest of the block was shaken up, too. Politics and Prose's owner Lissa Muscatine — who, as Clinton's former speechwriter, was on the crazies' radar herself — has talked about how her staff were trolled constantly, and got a fair number of threatening phone calls of their own. "I can't tell you how important it was … that you and President Clinton were there for us," she told Clinton yesterday. "Quietly and nobody knew. I've never had a chance to thank you publicly."
The Daily News says she also contrasted the Clintons' #pizzagate support with Vice-President Pence's handling of the incident. He lived less than a mile away, and a local neighborhood group even begged him to eat at Comet, or at least stop by, to help debunk the conspiracy and maybe give peace of mind to everybody on the block. "We'd see his motorcade up and down," she said. "Did he once think about coming in, buying a slice of pizza? Of course not."
This article by Clint Rainey appeared in New York magazine, today.
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September 19, 2017
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Comet had been a popular family hangout in D.C.'s Chevy Chase neighborhood for years. But besides probably scaring customers away, the Edgar Maddison Welch incident caused actual damages to the restaurant (he fired his AR-15 into a door and some computers on his hunt for child sex slaves), and it forced owner James Alefantis to hire security to stand guard at the door. They managed to raise $28,000 on GoFundMe to cover part of these costs, but the rest of the block was shaken up, too. Politics and Prose's owner Lissa Muscatine — who, as Clinton's former speechwriter, was on the crazies' radar herself — has talked about how her staff were trolled constantly, and got a fair number of threatening phone calls of their own. "I can't tell you how important it was … that you and President Clinton were there for us," she told Clinton yesterday. "Quietly and nobody knew. I've never had a chance to thank you publicly."
The Daily News says she also contrasted the Clintons' #pizzagate support with Vice-President Pence's handling of the incident. He lived less than a mile away, and a local neighborhood group even begged him to eat at Comet, or at least stop by, to help debunk the conspiracy and maybe give peace of mind to everybody on the block. "We'd see his motorcade up and down," she said. "Did he once think about coming in, buying a spice of pizza? Of course not."