#President tweets support for NY pizza shop after owner’s Trump flag controversy

President Trump tweeted his support for a Long Island pizza shop on Wednesday after the owner told Fox Business that a woman threatened to drive him out of business over his “Keep America Great” flag.

“Support Patio Pizza and its wonderful owner, Guy Caligiuri, in St. James, Long Island (N.Y.). Great Pizza!!!” Trump wrote shortly after the interview on “Varney & Co.”

Caligiuri had told the show’s host, Stuart Varney, that the controversy arose last Friday night when a woman picking up an order voiced her dissent to a worker over the flag hanging in the back of the pizza place.

When the worker told the customer it was the owner’s flag, “she took offense to that,” Caligiuri said.

The customer then “said that she was the administrator of a Facebook page and she was going to post it online, and she was gonna drive me out of business,” according to Caligiuri.

When told of the encounter, Caligiuri said he brushed it aside. But the Long Islander said he later started receiving calls from friends alerting him to a disparaging post.

Caligiuri said he was told the woman “posted nasty things about me online and was asking the [St. James] community to boycott Patio Pizza.”

A screenshot of the original post was reviewed by Business Insider, who reported the woman posted a photo of the flag and wrote she would no longer patronize Patio Pizza. Content promoting a community-wide boycott was not found.

Despite the post, Caligiuri said the next day his business was booming with supporters from the town and across Long Island.

“They supported our president. They support the flag that I had hanging in the back of my store,” he told Fox Business.

“It’s really wonderful. It’s really humbling,” he concluded.