Moscow Mules? Here's how a new NYC bar is using cocktails to fight Trump's conservative agenda

Ravi DeRossi, a New York City bar owner and restaurateur with 15 establishments in his portfolio, will open a new cocktail bar with the expressed purpose to fight Donald Trump, the New York Times reports.

“Coup,” named after “coup d’état,” will open on April 14 in downtown Manhattan. In an interview with the Times, DeRossi explains that he came up with the idea after Trump’s dramatic defeat of former rival Hillary Clinton.

“For the few weeks after the election, I couldn’t get out of bed,” Rossi said. “It was all I could do to read the news.”

To placate his uneasiness about Trump’s victory, Rossi and partner Sother Teague decided to install a “pop-up” bar in New York with a bold anti-Trump message. They commissioned artists to decorate the bar’s interior with clever signs, recalling the multitude of rallies and marches that have erupted in recent months to protest the new administration.

“I strongly believe that bars are meeting places for the community,” Teague told the Times. “They create community. And communities have goals that they try and achieve together.”

Beyond branding itself as a symbol of the resistance, “Coup” plans to invest in its beliefs.

“One-hundred percent of the profits are going to organizations that are either being defunded by the current administration or need money to fight the current administration, like Planned Parenthood and the A.C.L.U.,” Rossi said. The rotating guest bartenders will choose which organization they want to donate their shift’s profits to.

“The current administration seems to be willfully tearing down the good works built up by administrations past,” Teague said. “Coup is our opportunity to use the influence that we have and the good nature of our guests to highlight some of those works that need both support and visibility.”