There are few things as American as a McDonald’s. The golden arches burger chain has about 42,000 restaurants around the world, of which about 13,500 are in the United States, according to its latest annual report. The Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, put McDonald’s at the center of his battle against Kamala Harris this Sunday. The Democrat claims that she worked in one of them one summer when she was a student. Trump says it is a lie, based on the fact that no one has proven it. This Sunday, he went to a chain restaurant in Pennsylvania to fry potatoes and troll the Democrat.
Of course, Trump didn’t show up like a normal McDonald’s worker. He arrived in a caravan of around twenty vehicles including motorcyclists, police and secret service cars and ambulances. A crowd was waiting for him outside the restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, a residential area outside Philadelphia. “Right now I’m going for a job at McDonald’s. “I’ve really wanted to do this my whole life,” he told reporters.
Donald Trump, at McDonald’s with some fries.Doug Mills (via REUTERS)
Inside the restaurant, Trump took off his jacket, put on a black and yellow apron over his immaculate white shirt and red tie, and immediately mocked Harris for saying that the work there was “very hard.” An employee explained the fairly basic operation of the fryer and gave him a demonstration. Fox News went live. Then, it was Trump’s turn, who skipped the step that had just been explained to him of draining the French fries after removing them from the oil, but instead, he shook the metal basket. Then he put some portions of French fries in a bag – he spilled some salt and threw some over his shoulder as an incantation: “I’m very superstitious” – and went out to deliver them to a customer who had ordered them from the car with his family. “I’m going to give you some extra things. This is on Trump. “I’ve done it myself,” he told them.
“We have checked with McDonald’s, and they say, definitively, that there is no record that the liar Kamala Harris ever worked there. “In other words, she never worked there, and has lied about this ‘job’ for years,” he wrote this Sunday on his social network, Truth.
Trump, delivering his order to a customer.Brian Snyder (REUTERS)
Kamala Harris, who turned 60 this Sunday, claims that she worked a summer at McDonald’s tending the cashier, the fryer and the ice cream machine in Alameda County (California), in 1983, when she was studying at Howard University. in Washington. It’s something thousands and thousands of students have done for decades across the country. The Democrat presents that experience as proof of her middle-class origins, in contrast to her billionaire rival, heir to a real estate empire.
In his autobiography, Our truth, Harris says, “While I was at Howard, in addition to studying, I had many jobs.” He cites an internship at the Federal Trade Commission, research assignments at the National Archives, a guiding job at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and a fellowship with Senator Alan Cranston of California in the summer of his sophomore year. university, but not his time at McDonald’s.
In 2019, when she was a Democratic presidential primary candidate, Harris joined a picket line of striking chain workers and noted that he had worked at a McDonald’s. He has repeated it numerous times and at the Democratic convention in Chicago in August there were several references to it, including a Bill Clinton joke: “I’m happy that when she gets to the White House she will break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
In September, in an interview on MSNBC, The Democrat said: “Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family — I worked there when I was a student, I was a child — , who works there trying to raise families and pay the rent with that. And I think part of the difference between my opponent and I includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what then our responsibility is to meet those needs.”
Trump’s hoaxes
There are no reasons to doubt this story, beyond the fact that the time that has passed makes it difficult to verify it. Trump, however, is a specialist in questioning the biography of his rivals through hoaxes, such as that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And taking advantage of the fact that no reliable evidence has been found of Harris’s summer job, he began to question it very early on. “She is a liar. He didn’t work at McDonald’s. You said you worked at McDonald’s, right? He worked at McDonald’s. And he worked very hard. There’s just one problem. She didn’t work at McDonald’s. “She’s a liar,” he said in September at a rally in Arizona.
Another image of Trump inside McDonald’s.Doug Mills (Reuters)
In recent days, he has been preparing the ground for his visit to McDonald’s this Sunday. On Friday, at a rally in Detroit, he again said that Harris “lied about working at McDonald’s.” “That’s not a big deal, but I can be honest with you, it’s terrible,” he added. And this Saturday, in Latrobe (Pennsylvania), just outside of Pittsburgh, he announced: “I’m going to McDonald’s to fry potatoes. “I think I’ll do it tomorrow, and I think it will be somewhere in Pennsylvania.” At that same rally he called his rival a “shitty vice president” and slipped into vulgarity talking about the size of the penis of the golfer Arnold Palmer, whose name is given to the airport where he was speaking: “Arnold Palmer was quite a man, and I say it with the due respect to women. This is a guy who was quite the man. When he showered with other professionals, they left there. They said: ‘My God. “That’s incredible.” And he continued for 12 minutes talking about Palmer: “I had to say it. “We have very sophisticated women here, but they used to see Arnold as a man.”
Regarding his visit this Sunday, Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters Saturday that Trump would make the stop “so that a candidate in this election has actually worked at McDonald’s.” “Since Kamala Harris has not done it, President Trump by the end of tomorrow will have worked at McDonald’s. He will have made more fries than Kamala Harris ever did. I think that shows that he connects with hard-working Americans,” Miller said, according to the Associated Press.
“When Trump feels desperate, the only thing he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams said on Sunday, according to the agency. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was given millions on a silver platter, only to waste them,” he added.
Kamala Harris’ sermon
On her birthday, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the parishioners of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest (Georgia, one of the decisive states) this Sunday to talk to them about the importance of putting faith into action and lifting each other up instead of beating each other down, as well as the power Americans have to determine the future of our country through their vote. The speech is part of Harris-Walz’s “Souls to the Polls” campaign initiative, which encourages Black voters to put their faith into action at the polls.
In his speech, Harris spoke about the lessons of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the “duty” to “come to the aid of another in their time of need,” and shared a story from his time as a young intern in the district attorney’s office about a mother who was wrongfully detained, and how Harris and “pleaded” to ensure she could be released to return home to her children. “I’ll never forget that moment,” he said.
Harris underscored the power of people’s voices and votes in a democracy to make a difference. “Our country is at a crossroads,” he said. “What we do from now on depends on us,” he added. He reminded churchgoers that the American people will decide “what kind of country” they live in, one of “chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice.”
The vice president, referring to Donald Trump, denounced leaders who deepen divisions, instead of lifting others up. “It is our faith that guides us forward” in “times of difficulty and uncertainty.” He noted that, right now, there are leaders who “are trying to deepen division, spread hate, sow fear and cause chaos.” “The best expression of our strength,” he continued, is how “we reach out to each other with kindness and with love.”
