Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) recently slammed the “crazies” who asked her to leave their dining establishment earlier this month, and one expert in public humanities believes her response to the incident was a tactic to control a narrative.

During appearances on Fox News shows “Hannity” and “The Sunday Briefing” over the weekend, the governor and former White House press secretary said she was dining at a restaurant in Little Rock when the owner told her security detail that the eatery’s staff felt “threatened” and booted her from the establishment.

Sanders released a statement on X Thursday about the incident, writing: “Last week I was having lunch with two other moms at a restaurant when the owner approached a member of the State Police Executive Protection Detail and said my presence made their employees feel threatened and told us to leave.”

In both segments, Sanders said the request that she leave the restaurant proves the country is battling “normal versus crazy.” As she told “Sunday Briefing” host Peter Doocy, there are a “a few crazies out there, and they have very loud voices.”

It’s normal versus crazy in this country right now.Unfortunately, I saw some of the crazy myself last week. But never forget that the vast majority of Americans love God, love their families, and love our great country. pic.twitter.com/PX96PfZVet

The restaurant, The Croissanterie, disputed that anyone had told Sanders employees felt “threatened,” but did say that guests and employees expressed feeling “uncomfortable” and that “as the presence of her security detail became more widely noticed, by both employees and guests, questions were raised about them remaining in the restaurant.”

In its statement, The Croissanterie said it chose “not to interrupt” Sanders’ meal and that, approximately one hour into the governor’s visit, restaurant staff had approached her security detail to encourage Sanders to conclude her visit after she’d finished eating.

“Beverages were offered to the party for the road. Nearly 30 minutes later, the party remained on the premises,” the statement continued.

The restaurant said that it has a 90-minute table seating limit, and that “the security detail was approached a second time and asked to leave roughly 10 minutes before that time limit.”

The statement also addressed allegations that a restaurant employee had made a gesture flipping Sanders off, saying “the individual who made an inappropriate hand gesture was a customer ― not an employee ― and the matter has been addressed.”

Sanders has confirmed she was already finished eating when her security detail was approached. She told Doocy on “The Sunday Briefing” that she didn’t understand why the incident happened, saying she’s a “nice person,” and that we’re living in a “sad world.”

“It’s no longer ... between the left and the right. Now our country is in a battle between what is normal versus what is crazy,” she said, before later adding, “But I think that it gives us an opportunity to hold our heads high and show the normal. And I think that is the majority of Americans. There’s still so much good out there, certainly in my state of Arkansas.”

Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University, said that Sanders’ statements are a “blatant attempt to gaslight and hijack the narrative.”

It’s “ironic” that “MAGA has been a small and borderline group that has commandeered the U.S. government and the media, and has claimed to speak on behalf of all Americans,” Sarma said.

“So, when Sanders calls the clientele in the restaurant ‘crazies’ and a small minority, she is attempting to maintain the narrative that MAGA is the majority, when it is quite the opposite: Hillary Clinton won the majority vote (and Trump won the Electoral College),” they told HuffPost.

“It is equally ironic that MAGA and its minions — and this includes [President Donald] Trump and Sanders — claim to be normal, when the foundations of America were based on diversity and plurality, religious, ethnic, ideological and so on. Normative claims are always biased and fraught with agenda,” Sarma said.

Conor M. Dowling, professor of political science at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, said that Sanders’ response to the incident has been “in line with a Republican Party narrative for the last decade or so which attempts to label the left as ‘crazy’ and ‘too liberal’ and ‘out of touch.’”

“The governor’s response does not acknowledge that many Americans are experiencing anxiety and stress over some current national government policies,” he told HuffPost. “According to the restaurant owners, those experiencing such anxiety and stress [include] some of their workers and patrons, which put them in a difficult position.”

Fox News co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy was among the conservatives to express outrage at the restaurant’s request that Sanders leave. During a recent segment of “Fox & Friends,” she called the establishment’s owners “tyrants,” saying they aimed to “dehumanize” those who disagree with their political ideologies.

Speaking about Campos-Duffy’s remarks, Dowling said that “dehumanization is a persistent political and social problem, and one that conservative politicians and pundits certainly also engage in.”

Sarma said that it’s “ironic that Sanders seeks sympathy for how she claims to have been treated,” even as her “circle often dismisses or minimizes the suffering of others.”

“The hypocrisy is palpable: MAGA pundits and others are attempting to switch the narrative so that they appear as the victims, and the actual victims are recast as the perpetrators,” they said.

Sarma said that it should “come as no surprise that the restaurant’s narrative is not the same as the one given by Sanders.”

“Sanders emphasizes being targeted for her political views, while the restaurant suggested something much more innocuous, namely, that she had overstayed her visit and that they needed tables to be freed up for other customers,” they said. “It is ironic that Sanders and other MAGA figures of her ilk claim to support local businesses but are blind to the disruption their presence might have caused and the space they occupied that could have gone to new paying customers.”

Sarma also believes that Sanders pointing out that she was dining with “two other moms” was intentional.

“[It’s] a blatant attempt to appeal to the MAGA base (just like Sarah Palin, who prided herself on being a ‘Mama Bear’) and to make it seem that she was simply a regular person out for a meal,” they said, before adding: “She is not a regular person in the slightest and creates an imaginary narrative that she is.”

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