“I’ll take a Big Mac, fries, and uh, what are your thoughts on increasing employment rates?”
This isn’t your typical McDonald’s order, but it could have been a question posed to Donald Trump during his brief stint behind the counter at the fast-food restaurant on October 20. The presidential candidate and former president took on a shift at McDonald’s, engaging in activities such as handing out orders and cooking food, according to posts on his website and TikTok. However, not everyone is convinced by his actions.
After Trump shared his experience at McDonald’s, claiming he wanted to work there to dispute a story about his opponent Kamala Harris having worked there, internet users started to investigate. Harris’s campaign and someone who knew her at the time affirm that she is a former McDonald’s worker, as reported by The New York Times.
Trump, despite lacking evidence, has accused Harris of fabricating the story, stating in his video: “I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s, I never did. I’m running against somebody that said she did but it turned out to be a totally phoney story.”
While Trump was enjoying his time handing out orders at the drive-thru window, some individuals claim they have found ‘proof’ that he was not being truthful about his McDonald’s duties.
A Reddit post showcased an image of a McDonald’s sign in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, indicating the restaurant would be ‘closed… to accommodate a visit at the request of former President Trump and his campaign’. The post also included a photo of a car at an empty drive-thru with a caption suggesting a “car rehearsal” took place.
Trump’s website claims he ‘cooked food, bagged fries [and] worked the drive-through’, although ABC News reports the restaurant was closed to the public during his visit.
Despite not having to serve regular customers, journalists on the scene witnessed Trump learning how to cook and season McDonald’s fries and serve people in the drive-thru lane.
During his visit, Trump also took questions from the media while outside, though he later remarked it was a ‘strange place to do a news conference’.
Following the online sharing of footage from Trump’s shift, Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, commented that the visit ‘showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain’.
Costello stated: “Trump doesn’t understand what it’s like to work for a living, no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second term plan is to give himself, his wealthy buddies, and giant corporations another massive tax cut.”
In defense against the claims of a ‘staged’ event, Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, reiterated the accusation that Harris ‘lied about ever working at McDonald’s’ and accused her of ‘now lying about President Trump’s historic moment making delicious French fries at a McDonald’s in battleground Pennsylvania’.
Rogers concluded: “The truth: President Trump has now worked at McDonald’s longer than Kamala Harris ever did.”