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Magazine|The Restaurant Where Trump Acolytes Go to See and Be Seen
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/magazine/butterworths-restaurant-washington-trump-maga.html
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A barrel-chested young man was just settling into his table with three companions near the bar at Butterworth’s, the buzzy Trump-friendly French bistro on Capitol Hill, when one of the establishment’s owners glided over to have a word. The young man listened, then nodded and removed his red Make America Great Again cap.
Listen to this article, read by Robert Petkoff
The owner, Raheem Kassam, returned to his corner table, personalized with a gold plate: “The Raheem J. Kassam Nook.” “It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t necessarily occur to a typical MAGA person,” he said, “that there is etiquette to these things.”
Kassam withdrew a small object from his blazer pocket. “I’m a big believer in conceal-carry,” he cracked. It was a tin of caviar, which he placed on the table beside an appetizer: New Hampshire sardines with pickled ramps. Kassam, who is 38, is the editor in chief of The National Pulse, a right-wing populist news site, and a prominent cheerleader of President Trump. As the restaurant’s de facto host, he provides instant confirmation to fellow Trump devotees who are entering Butterworth’s for the first time that they have come to the right place.
Indeed, more than anyone else, he is why it is the right place. Kassam, the child of Indian immigrants who grew up in the working-class west London suburb Uxbridge and whose father ran two fast-food restaurants, scrapped his way to serving as the chief of staff to the Brexit party co-founder Nigel Farage. And for Trump’s onetime pirate ship of a political movement, Butterworth’s represents an ostentatious new evolutionary phase: the deplorable as arriviste.
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