McGig: Did Kamala Harris work at McDonald's?

Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks, during a town hall in The People’s Light in Malvern, Pennsylvania, US, October 21, 2024. Reuters

With just over two weeks to go before the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump served French fries at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday while wearing a black and yellow apron over his white shirt and signature red tie.

The former president’s campaign move was meant to be a jab at Vice President Kamala Harris, who claims to have worked at the fast-food franchise in her youth.

While the Harris team has not offered proof that she did, the Trump camp has called it a ’lie'.

Trump’s McGig

Republican presidential candidate Trump stopped at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday to “work” the fry cooker and give out McNuggets from the drive-thru window.

It was intended to highlight Harris’s mention during the campaign trail that she spent a summer working at McDonald’s while attending college.

“I’ve now worked (at McDonald’s) for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump said from the drive-thru window.

Kamala Harris lied about working at McDonald's so the most powerful man in the world just worked a drive through shift just so he could say he worked 15 more minutes of fast food than her. He's running one of the best and most comical campaigns I've ever seen. We will never have… pic.twitter.com/HLDwZlyzJo

“We have checked with McDonald’s, and they say, definitively, that there is no record of Lyin’ Kamala Harris ever having worked there. In other words, she never worked there, and has lied about this job for years. Additionally, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are killing franchises, want to end all franchises, which will destroy values and jobs. Also, remember, from me, No Tax On Tips,” he said in a post on Truth Social.

So, did Harris work at the fast-food franchise?

Yes. At least she says so.

Harris on Monday was asked, “Madam Vice President, did you work at a McDonald’s?

She responded, “Did I? I did.”

Harris has recalled working at a McDonald’s that her campaign has identified as the location on Central Avenue in Alameda, California, 41 years ago, in the summer of 1983 when she would have been a rising sophomore at Howard University.

She confirmed the same in an earlier interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, saying that her experience there allowed her to connect more authentically to everyday working Americans’ financial struggles in her pursuit of the highest office in the country.

“It was not a small job. There are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to…raise families and pay rent,” Harris told Ruhle.

Working at McDonald’s motivated Harris to make cost reduction and economic security her “top priority” if she were elected president in November.

However, neither her campaign nor McDonald’s corporate office has responded to repeated requests for more information.

This is although the company made its first reference to such requests in an internal statement on Sunday, saying in part, “We and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ‘80s.”

Wanda Kagan, one of Harris’s friends, told the New York Times that she remembered Harris working at McDonald’s at that time. The recollection was based on what Harris’ mother, who passed away in 2009, had told her years prior, according to the Times.

Five years ago, during her brief bid in the Democratic presidential primary, Harris made the first public reference to the summer job.

She said to striking McDonald’s workers on a Las Vegas picket line in 2019: “I worked at McDonald’s. I did the French fries and I did the ice cream… If we want to talk about these Golden Arches being a symbol for the best of America, well, the arches are falling short.”

Before then, however, she did not refer to it throughout her previous public office campaigns or in her two autobiographical books.

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that looked into the claims in August, also reported that it was missing from a resume and job application she sent in a year after graduating from college.

That application was submitted in October 1987 for a position as a law clerk in the district attorney’s office in Alameda County. When asked to name all of the jobs they have held in the last ten years, Harris provided several positions, but not the one at McDonald’s.

A signpost for the upcoming election

Harris has brought up the McDonald’s job multiple times since the 2019 reference.

Speaking to Drew Barrymore on her show in April, she’s referred to herself as “a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother and had a summer job at McDonald’s,” and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as “a son of the Nebraska plains, who spent summers on the farm.”

“Only in America is it possible that the two of us would be running together all the way to the White House,” she wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

While former President Bill Clinton, a noted frequent McDonald’s diner, made fun of Harris breaking his record as “the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s,” Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas compared Harris’ college career to that of Trump, saying the president was “born with the silver spoon in his mouth” during the Democratic National Convention.

Lack of evidence — an opportunity for Trump

Trump has frequently attacked Harris by pointing to the ambiguity surrounding the McDonald’s gig.

“Turned out she didn’t work at McDonald’s. After an exhaustive study that took about 20 minutes, they found out she never worked there. There’s a lot of fake stuff going on,” Trump said at a Moms for Liberty convention in Washington over the summer.

Following up on Truth Social, the Republican nominee would assert that Harris “NEVER WORKED THERE,” accompanied by a Photoshopped picture of Harris sporting a McDonald’s baseball cap.

The Harris campaign has “completely shut down” on the topic, according to a Trump campaign official who spoke to Newsweek in September. The vice president’s staff has not replied to the Trump camp or any reporters who have looked into her resume.

“McDonald’s is code for Trump. He likes to say things that get his base’s attention. It’s like saying she wasn’t ‘good enough’ as a teen to even do that. Further, he talks about her as someone who lies—and that riles up his supporters,” Richard Laermer, the chief executive of RLM Public Relations, told Newsweek. 

“It fits in with his overarching narrative,” Haggerty said.

Additionally, Harris’ unwillingness to respond to questions regarding her “McGig” further highlights her inconsistent policy stance, the Trump campaign official told Newsweek.

She has changed her stance on at least nine issues, including the environment, firearms, immigration, reparations, and Medicare for All, according to an Axios report.

McDonald’s in the US

One in eight Americans, or almost 41 million people, have worked at one of McDonald’s 13,500 outlets in the United States, according to a news release issued by the company in October 2023. Among them are Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon; Paul Ryan, a former vice presidential contender; Jay Leno, Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Broadway star, and even Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“McDonald’s is everywhere and is the ’everyman’ food venue,” political expert Steven Schier told Newsweek. “If you are trying to broadly identify with working Americans of modest means, McDonald’s is a place they frequent and know—and you can appear close to them at such a location.”

“Working at McDonald’s reinforces the ‘I’m one of you’ narrative, since so many of us started in such jobs like this (myself included),” James Haggerty, a crisis communication expert and CEO of PRCG Haggerty LLC, told the publication, adding, “It was, and is, a hard job, but — particularly in that generation — slinging burgers at McDonald’s was seen as a stepping stone as you worked your way to better things.”

“Rather than just saying ‘I’m one of you,’ Harris is showing it,” he said. “That’s the type of detail that puts meat on the bones of the story.”

With inputs from agencies

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