The Republican candidate for the White House, the former president Donald Trumpcampaigned this Sunday at a McDonald’s restaurant in the key state of Pennsylvania, where he accused his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, of making up that he worked for the fast food chain when he was young.
The Republican stopped at a franchise on the outskirts of Philadelphiawhere she donned an apron and spent a few minutes cooking fries alongside employees and handing them out through the drive-thru window.
“I love McDonald’s. I love the work. And I think it’s inappropriate when someone says everywhere that they worked at a McDonald’s (…) but never worked at one,” the Republican said of his Democratic rival.
Donald Trump visited a McDonald’s in suburban Philadelphia on Sunday for a photo opportunity. It was a move intended to attack his opponent and give the billionaire candidate some credibility with the working-class voters he needs to win back the White House. pic.twitter.com/HUfbWvsE2r
—The New York Times (@nytimes) October 20, 2024
According to the Harris campaign, the vice president worked during the summer of 1983 at a McDonald’s in the city of Alameda, California, working the cash register and cooking fries, to pay for her studies at Howard University in Washington.
Harriswho did not give more details on the subject, He generally explains this story to show his proximity to the working classes and distance himself from Trump, a real estate mogul who inherited his father’s empire.
The Republican, an avid fast food consumer who in 2019 handed out McDonald’s hamburgers at a White House event, has repeatedly accused Harris without evidence of making up that part of his resume.
Ian Sams, Harris’ spokesman, said Sunday that Trump was lying out of desperation: “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because they handed him millions on a platter money and then he squandered it,” he said. .
Harris does not mention his experience at McDonald’s in his memoir and apparently the first time he spoke about it publicly was during his first presidential campaign in 2019, when he joined that company’s strikers in Las Vegas.
McDonald’s avoided responding to several requests for information from U.S. media asking to confirm whether Harris worked at the restaurant 40 years ago.
Trump has a long history of spreading lies about his political rivals’ pasts. and was a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama (2009–2017) was born in Kenya and therefore had no right to be president under the US Constitution.
