Ken Shupe responded to a woman who was stranded on an interstate in North Carolina on Monday. Shupe is a tow truck driver; the woman had been involved in a wreck, according to reports.
But when Shupe arrived, he noticed something about the woman’s car – specifically, he noticed that the woman was a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, according to Fox Carolina.
“Every business dealing in recent history that I’ve had with a socialist-minded person, I haven’t got paid,” Shupe told the station.
He added: “Every time I’ve dealt with these people in recent history, I get ‘Berned.’
“With an ‘e,’ not a ‘u.’ ”
So Shupe refused to tow her.
“He said, ‘I can’t tow you . . . you’re a Bernie supporter,’ ” the woman, Cassandra McWade, told the Huffington Post. “I was like: ‘Wait, are you serious? You’re kidding me.’ ”
He wasn’t.
Fox Carolina reported: “When he saw ‘a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff’ he said he told the woman, ‘very politely,’ ” that he could not “tow her car because she was ‘obviously a socialist’ and advised her to ‘call the government’ for a tow.”
“Something came over me, I think the Lord came to me, and he just said get in the truck and leave,” Shupe told an ABC affiliate. “And when I got in my truck, you know, I was so proud, because I felt like I finally drew a line in the sand and stood up for what I believed.”
According to Fox Carolina, Shupe identified himself as a conservative Christian who supports Donald Trump.
Shupe told the ABC station that he’d had “some horrible experiences in the last six months with towing cars for this mindset individuals,” in which, he said, he hasn’t received payment for services.
“They want to argue about a $50 tow bill, and it turns into just a drama and a fuss,” he said, according to WLOS. “And I said, you know, I’m not going to associate with them, and I’m not going to do any business with them.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Sarah Larimer
