“I’ll take a Big Mac, fries, and, uh, how about increasing employment rates?”
While not your usual McDonald’s order, customers could have asked something like this when presidential candidate Donald Trump took a shift at the fast-food chain on October 20.
The Republican was shown handing out orders and cooking food in videos posted on his website and TikTok, but some viewers questioned whether the event was authentic.
After Trump announced his McDonald’s shift, many began digging into the details. He claimed he wanted to work there because he thought reports of his opponent, Kamala Harris, once working at McDonald’s were false. Harris’ campaign, along with a friend from that period, confirmed she worked there, as reported by The New York Times, but Trump accused her of lying, stating in his video, “I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s. I never did. I’m running against someone who said she did, but it turned out to be a totally phony story.”
Trump was seen handing out orders at a drive-thru, saying he was having “a lot of fun.” However, some pointed to ‘evidence’ that his role was exaggerated. A Reddit post showed an image of a sign with the McDonald’s logo at the Feasterville, Pennsylvania, location, saying the restaurant was ‘closed… to accommodate a visit at the request of former President Trump and his campaign.’ Another photo showed an empty drive-thru with the caption: “There was a car rehearsal.”
Trump’s website claimed he ‘cooked food, bagged fries [and] worked the drive-through,’ but ABC News reported that the restaurant was closed to the public during his visit.
Although Trump didn’t serve regular customers, reporters saw him learning how to cook and season McDonald’s fries, and serving a few people at the drive-thru. He also took media questions outside, calling it a ‘strange place to do a news conference.’
After videos of Trump’s shift surfaced, Joseph Costello, a spokesman for Harris’ campaign, said the event “showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain.”
Costello added, “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 big corporations another massive tax cut.”
Responding to claims the appearance was staged, Taylor Rogers, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, repeated the accusation that Harris ‘lied about ever working at McDonald’s,’ and said, “President Trump has now worked at McDonald’s longer than Kamala Harris ever did.”