Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stopped at a McDonald’s in Feasterville, PA, this weekend to man the fry station. However, this wasn’t just a regular photo op. Trump chose McDonald’s to mock Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ claim that she worked at one of the restaurant’s Alameda, CA, locations when attending college in the early 1980s. The relatively minor talking point has become a major point of contention in a race that has become almost dead even in the run-up to election day.
Kamala Harris’ McDonald’s claim becomes a major election talking point
Donald Trump has lept on the seemingly insignificant claim by Harris that she worked at McDonald’s in Alameda, CA in the summer of 1983 when she was a sophomore at Howard University. He claims that she is lying and that no proof exists that she actually worked at the restaurant chain. He went so far as to stage an appearance at a Feasterville, PA McDonald’s, alleging beforehand, “I will have worked longer and harder at McDonald’s than she did if I do that even for half an hour.”
Despite Trump’s heckling, the Harris campaign has done nothing to refute his accusations. Besides The New York Times claiming a single friend vaguely backed up her statement that she worked at a McDonald’s, Harris has provided no proof that the story is true. She didn’t mention working at the restaurant in her 2010 or 2019 memoirs and has provided no photos or documents to lend credence to the claim. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the job was also missing from an application and resume Harris submitted around a year after graduating college.
The first time Harris her days at the golden arches seems to be during a Service Employees International Union rally during her first presidential bid in 2019, where she claims she worked “doing french fries and ice cream” for spending money during college. According to Snopes, she would later recount, “I did fries, and then I did the cashier,” during an April 2024 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, and again in an August 2024 post on X. Bill Clinton also shared the story on her behalf at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
According to Newsweek, efforts to elicit a response from the Harris campaign or McDonald’s about Harris’s employment have gone unanswered.
Many are wondering why Harris would lie, and experts generally agree that it comes down to optics with the working class. Despite being a worldwide operation, McDonald’s is associated closely with the United States, and working there is seen as a stepping stone for many people as they work their way to something greater. The thought of someone working as a McDonald’s fry cook and someday becoming President of the United States is evocative of the “American Dream” and makes for a compelling story.
However, while there’s no proof that Harris is telling the truth, none has been provided that she’s lying either. It’s a liability to hold onto employee information for an extended amount of time after they’ve left, so it would make sense that between 1983 and now, McDonald’s purged her record. There’s also no reason that she would have held onto any evidence of working there 40 years ago. It’s plausible that she worked at the restaurant; proof simply no longer exists.
Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck in a heated race for the White House, and putting an opponent in a position where they’re unable to respond to an accusation could have an outsized effect on the election. We’ll likely see a situation where tens of thousands of votes are the deciding factor in the swing states. So, swaying the population of a small town, even if it’s over something as petty as whether Kamala Harris actually worked at McDonald’s, could be the difference between victory or defeat.
