Associated Press
Donald Trump is expected to visit a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday as he continues criticizing Democrat Kamala Harris.
Trump claims — without evidence — that she never worked at the fast-food chain while in college.
The Republican presidential nominee plans to visit a McDonald’s and work the french fry cooker before heading to an evening town hall in Lancaster and then attending the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.
The former President has fixated in recent weeks on the summer job Harris said she held in college: working the cash register and making fries at McDonald’s while attending Howard University in Washington. Trump claimed the Vice President never worked there, the latest example of his longtime strategy of seizing on conspiracy theories and questioning the credentials of his political opponents.
Trump repeated the claim Friday night at a campaign rally in Detroit, saying Harris “lied about working at McDonald’s.”
“That’s like not a big thing, but can I be honest with you, it’s terrible,” Trump said.
Harris, a California prosecutor before becoming a Senator and Vice President, uses her McDonald’s experience to show she understands working-class struggles.
“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams said Sunday. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”
“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,” she said. “I worked there as a student.”
Harris also said: “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs.”
On Saturday, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, Jason Miller, told reporters that Trump would be making the stop “so that one candidate in this race can actually have worked at McDonald’s.”
“Since Kamala Harris has not, President Trump, by the end of tomorrow, will have worked at McDonald’s. He’ll have done fries more than Kamala Harris ever has,” Miller said. “I think it shows he connects with hard-working Americans.”
Harris’ campaign did not immediately comment on Trump’s McDonald’s plan.
Representatives for McDonald’s did not respond to a message about whether the company had employment records for one of its restaurants 40 years ago.
It’s far from the first time that Trump has promoted baseless claims. Most notably, he claims falsely that he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden due to voter fraud. Trump said during his presidential debate with Harris that immigrants who had settled in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
Trump has long gone after opponents based on their personal history, particularly women and racial minorities.
Before he ran for President, Trump was a leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy that baselessly claimed President Barack Obama was from Africa, was not an American citizen and therefore was ineligible to be President. Trump used it to raise his political profile, demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate.
Five years after Obama did so, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States.
During his first run for president, Trump repeated a tabloid’s claims that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, who was born in Cuba, had links to President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Cruz and Trump competed for the party’s 2016 nomination.
In January of this year, when Trump was facing Nikki Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, in the Republican primary, he shared on his social media network a post with false claims that Haley’s parents were not citizens when she was born, therefore making her ineligible to be president.
Haley is the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants, making her automatically a native-born citizen and meeting the constitutional requirement to run for president.
Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona, said using a campaign visit to focus on the claims about McDonald’s four decades ago is a “puzzling detour” but that Trump is “not above throwing anything on the wall to see if it sticks.”
“When Donald Trump isn’t talking about the economy and illegal immigration, he’s off-topic about the things that people care about,” Marson said.
Marson suggested that Trump would be better off talking about the economy and immigration, which he does not consider “off-topic.”
“I don’t think there’s an undecided voter out there that will respond or that will make their decision based on whether or not Kamala Harris actually worked at McDonald’s in the 1980s,” Marson said.
___
Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
19 comments
Bobblehead Kammy
October 20, 2024 at 12:25 pm
I saw Kammy with a shovel a few weeks ago. She handled that shovel like a person that has never held one. Middle Class? My azz.
TJC
October 20, 2024 at 2:02 pm
Got to hand it to you, you shovel bullshit like no one else.
Billy Rotberg
October 20, 2024 at 5:04 pm
She’s low class. Anyone who sells themselves to Willie Brown is.
yew oweme
October 20, 2024 at 1:14 pm
MAGA MARK, i know very few middle class people that can handle a shovel. so what’s your point peachy? you don’t have a point, that’s the crux of your many issues. you are clueless and pointless, how does that feel? what are you going to cry about after harris wins? you owe me for schooling you.
Bobblehead Kammy
October 20, 2024 at 1:48 pm
Schooling me on what you old fart? Dude you aren’t EF Hutton. Get over yourself.
yew oweme
October 20, 2024 at 10:11 pm
MAGA MARK , you idiot, ef hutton went out of business in the early 80’s for bad business practices, mostly greed related. i’m a successful business person who is NOT greedy. so you have no idea what you’re talking about as usual. that pesky dunning – kruger effect seems to haunt you. you need schooling real bad.
Bobblehead Kammy
October 21, 2024 at 4:47 am
You are a slum lord. STFU.
yew oweme
October 21, 2024 at 12:38 pm
MAGA MARKIE, none of my properties could be considered even close to a slum.. you are obviously jealous of me and you lash out like a toddler that didn’t get enough ice cream. it’s that pesky dunning – kruger effect kicking in. dude, seek help.
Rick and Zed's gay man sex emporium
October 20, 2024 at 5:51 pm
Slow day at the emporium, Rick?
Cindy
October 20, 2024 at 7:23 pm
For a campaign not liking Obama Care. Cholesterol isn’t in play …ok
Skeptic
October 20, 2024 at 10:01 pm
Saw the clip. They had to shut down the McDonalds because untrained Donny was so bad at customer service? Where did all the regular customers of that particular store get their Happy Meals today?
Tom
October 21, 2024 at 11:17 am
Trump couldn’t pass the background check to work at Macca’s. Not even sure why he’s pretending.
Tjb
October 21, 2024 at 4:40 pm
Sadly trump did not wash his hands after he changed his diaper and he still made the fries.
food
October 21, 2024 at 1:14 am
Thank you for publishing this article.
Linwood Wright
October 21, 2024 at 11:07 am
I’m still a little mixed up on his appearances.
Was this before or after he just played music 40 minutes and swayed around on stage in that one weird full blown dementia episode? Or was it after he went on stage and talked about the size of Arnold Palmer’s junk?
Dude is obviously impaired.
Tjb
October 21, 2024 at 4:52 pm
Do you think trump can afford his plane working a Job that pays 15 dollars a hour.
HE's BACK: EARL PITTS AMERICAN
October 21, 2024 at 1:08 pm
Good afternoon AMERICA,
Ya know if Uncle Joe was not still mad at Kammie for stabbing him in the back Joe could have gotten Corn Pop to say he worked at Mickie D’s with Kammie.
PITTS UP AMERICA
EARL PITTS AMERICAN
yew oweme
October 21, 2024 at 4:29 pm
EARL SHITTS, if you weren’t so crazy, you wouldn’t say so many crazy things. earl, we got your number, and it ain’t at all flattering for you. do you not have an ounce of dignity? earl, your schtick is moldy.
Michael K
October 21, 2024 at 11:57 pm
At first I thought Trump was applying to be Ronald McDonald – after all, he already paints his orange and wears a yellow raccoon on his head.
Alas, the guy who was handed everything – including $400 million from daddy – is simply mocking those who struggle working minimum wage jobs
Comments are closed.