“SNL” cast member Pete Davidson on Saturday ripped into those protesting the arrest of a pub owner in Staten Island who violated COVID-19 restrictions earlier this week, and mocked them as the sort who would deny the Holocaust.
“I saw the protests. People were outside the bar shouting about freedom, taunting the cops, chanting that they should arrest the governor, but it’s Staten Island, so I assumed that it was just like a typical last call,” said Davidson, 27, who is himself a Staten Island native.
Mac’s Public House in Staten Island made headlines last week when its co-owner, Danny Presti, was arrested after “trespassing” on his own property after reopening in defiance of Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 regulations. Thousands of protesters subsequently gathered outside his establishment to protest his arrest and the lingering lockdowns crushing small businesses in New York City.
Davidson noted how Mac’s Pub is in a “neighborhood with the second highest COVID infections in all of New York, so the rule is that they’re supposed to let people eat or drink outside, and the owner said no one wants to do that because they’ll go out of business.”
“But the argument that people in Staten Island don’t want to drink outside can be disproven by going to literally any Little League game,” Davidson added. “One guy at the protest even gave a speech where he literally compared not being able to drink indoors to being Jewish during the Holocaust, which must have been awkward for the people there who had to suddenly pretend they believed in the Holocaust.”
Davidson, who starred in “The King of Staten Island,” added that the protesters were making Staten Islanders “look like babies.”
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Last week, Presti declared his business to be an “autonomous zone” independent of state and local edicts mandating that he shutter his establishment.
As The Daily Wire reported:
A pub in Staten Island, New York, established itself as an “autonomous zone” in defiance of Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 edicts.
“!ATTENTION! We hereby declare this establishment an !!!AUTONOMOUS ZONE!!!” signs proclaimed outside Mac’s Public House in Grant City, according to the New York Post. “We refuse to abide by any rules and regulations put forth by the Mayor of NYC and Governor of NY State.”
The signs referenced last summer’s short-lived anarchist settlement in Seattle, Washington, which fizzled when law enforcement disbanded them.
“At this point, we’re OK with it, because we’re not paying it,” co-owner Danny Presti said of the fines they have received for remaining open. “[The Sheriff’s Department] is issuing us $1,000 fines, so they keep coming back. We’re still here. We’re not letting them in.”
In addition to the thousands of dollars in fines, the pub also faced a shut-down order from the state Health Department and a revocation of its liquor license from the State Liquor Authority.
“We’re not backing down. You think you scared me by . . . saying I don’t have a license now to serve liquor now? Well, guess what? That liquor license is on the wall. If that liquor license is gonna come off the wall, it’s gonna be done by Cuomo. You wanna come down here and pull that license off the wall?” McAlarney says in a YouTube video that was posted Friday.