Lovin' It: The ConWeb Cheered Trump's Stunt At McDonald's
Newsmax and the Media Research Center (and WorldNetDaily too) hyped Donald Trump's 15-minute stunt of making fries at McDonald's to further a never-proven attack on Kamala Harris.
As apparently instructed by the Trump campaign, the Media Research Center spent no small part of the presidential campaign obsessing on an extremely minor issue: whether Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s as a teenager. Here’s how the MRC initially pushed the inanity:
Alex Christy demanded that both an interviewer of Harris and moderators at the Trump-Harris debate ask Harris if she actually worked at McDonald’s and why she “never mentioned it until you decided to run for president.”
Tim Graham huffed in a Sept. 9 post: “The Washington Free Beacon offered evidence that Harris didn’t list any employment at McDonald’s on a job application shortly after she allegedly worked there. Snopes.com ruled her claim was ‘Unproven.'”
Jorge Bonilla whined that in an interview with Harris, Stephanie Ruhle made a joke of Republican obsession with the issue.
Graham returned to grumble in a Sept. 27 post that one reporter “even repeated Harris’s claim that she worked at McDonald’s one summer in her college years,” repeating the Free Beacon’s inconclusive alleged reporting.
Curtis Houck complained that in his interview with Harris, Howard Stern “gushed over her (false) claim about working at McDonald’s” — while offering no proof the claim was false.
So when Trump pulled a stunt of pretending to work at McDonald’s for 15 minutes in an attempt to bolster the shaky narrative, the MRC was totally ready to defend the lameness of it (just as Newsmax did). Bonilla groused in an Oct. 20 post:
In keeping with an earlier promise, former President Donald Trump visited a Pennsylvania McDonald’s for a 15-minute shift at the fry station and drive-through. The CBS Evening News came unglued.
Watch as correspondent Caitlyn Huey-Burns dismisses the Trump workday as little more than a “political stunt”:
[…]
One imagines the hushed, reverential tones that Huey-Burns might deploy were Kamala Harris to take a shift working the Baby ChopVac 9000 at the local Planned Parenthood. She might even call it an example of Harris being relatable. She certainly wouldn’t sneeringly call it a “stunt”.
But, alas, this is Donald Trump. At a McDonald’s. Doing something we used to call “retail politics”. And the Regime Media, in their perpetual bitterness, are bitter at the fact Trump can pull these things off without running away from unscheduled human contact.
In this bitterness, Huey-Burns is left to firefight for Kamala Harris’s college job at McDonald’s which, without evidence, she claims to have worked.
Bonilla offered no proof she did not. The next day, Curtis Houck tried to present the Free Beacon’s uterly non-conclusive nattering about Harris as some massive investigative reporting endeavor:
CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today went apoplectic on Monday over former President Trump’s campaign stop at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, melting down over the “staged” event with “prescreened supporters” by the campaign (and presumably the Secret Service) and falsely arguing Trump “claim[ed] without any evidence that Vice President Harris didn’t once work at the fast food chain[.]”
By doing so, the Harris lemmings ignored extensive reporting by the great Washington Free Beacon, which has spent months covering this Harris claim that has zero concrete evidence to support it, including from McDonald’s itself.
CBS co-host Tony Dokoupil twice hit Trump, downplaying it as “staged” event. White House and campaign corresponded Ed O’Keefe had the network’s 2024 report and shared that Trump went “on offense last night in battleground Pennsylvania, visiting a Pittsburgh Steelers game” after “a day of campaign stops.”
[…]
He then played a clip of Trump saying “she never worked at McDonald’s,” but dutifully rebutted that as though he were a Harris surrogate: “She says she did. He leaned through the drive-through window to take reporter questions, but wouldn’t say if he supports boosting the minimum wage.”
It seems the real lemming here is Houck, slavishly adhering to his assigned talking points.
Graham rehashed this whining in his Oct. 22 podcast:
Then look at CBS ripping Trump for having some fun with Kamala Harris’s unproven claim that she worked at McDonald’s one summer. Trump manned the drive-through and served up some fries at a franchise in Pennsylvania.
Ed O’Keefe on CBS weirdly claimed Trump had “no evidence” that Harris did NOT work there. Harris has yet to prove she did, but the liberal reporters say “she said she did,” and that should be good enough. O’Keefe said Trump’s campaign day “included a visit to a McDonald’s, closed just for him, where he tried scoring political points after claiming without any evidence, that Vice President Harris didn’t once work at the fast food chain while in college.”
The New York Times headline was “Trump, Slinging Fries and Smearing Harris, Takes Turn Behind a McDonald’s Counter.”
Reporter Michael Gold sent this message: “The visit married his two fixations: his well-documented affection for fast food — McDonald’s in particular — and a more recent pattern of accusing Vice President Kamala Harris without evidence of lying about a summer job working at McDonald’s.”
Graham didn’t disprove anything those reporters said.
Joseph Vazquez complained in an Oct. 23 post:
The New York Times was so triggered by former President Donald Trump’s recent trolling of Vice President Kamala Harris’ employment record that it committed a major logical fallacy when attempting to fact-check him.
Trump made a high-profile appearance at a McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania to work the fryers, on Oct. 20 and The Times couldn’t handle it. The newspaper fired off a bevy of whiny news items complaining about Trump casting doubt on Harris’ claim that she formerly worked for fast-food giant. “Kamala Harris and McDonald’s: A College Job, and a Trump Attack” and “Trump, Slinging Fries and Smearing Harris, Takes Turn Behind a McDonald’s Counter,” were just two of the headlines that led the propaganda-laced stories. Both stories tried to idiotically put the burden of proof on Trump, suggesting he must prove that Harris never worked at McDonald’s instead of expecting Harris to prove her own claims that she did.
The Times apparently suffered from an extreme lack of self-awareness when drafting their stories. The authors railed against Trump’s alleged “pattern of accusing Vice President Kamala Harris without evidence of lying about a summer job working at McDonald’s.”
But what evidence did The Times utilize to retort Trump? None.
What evidence did Vazquez utilize to report to Harris? None.
In an Oct. 31 post, Mark Finkelstein claimed that CNN’s Kasie Hunt “was clearly worried by Trump’s entertaining, attention-attracting moves of working in a McDonald’s and riding shotgun in a garbage truck. She insisted instead that voters focus on Trump’s history of election denial and hints that he might do it again this year,” pointing out that such stunts were designed to distract from his own hateful rhetoric. After Hunt dropped a “forest for the trees” response, Finkelstein huffed: “The ‘trees’ that should be disregarded are Trump’s photo-ops. The ‘forest’ to which attention must be paid is Trump’s 2020 election denial and his supposed threats to do it again.” Finkelstein didn’t explain why that should be ignored.
Newsmax and Trump’s stunt
Newsmax’s Jeremy Frankel cheered a then-upcoming stunt by Donald Trump in a Oct. 15 article:
Former President Donald Trump plans to work behind the counter and “work the fry cooker” at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania this weekend.
Trump’s trolling of Vice President Kamala Harris is due to her having repeatedly claimed to have worked at McDonald’s in the past but has not shown any evidence of having done so.
“Kamala never had a job at McDonald’s. Her resume talks about McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s,” Trump said at a New York press conference last month.
Eric Mack dutifully served as Trump’s press agent in an Oct. 20 article, parroting the campaign’s narrative:
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump planned to troll Vice President Kamala Harris for allegedly continuing to lie about having worked for McDonald’s, rolling up his sleeves as a McDonald’s fry cook in a campaign appearance Sunday.
And the Trump campaign is trolling Harris for having made baseless claims devoid of evidence.
Citing the past silence of Harris on ever having claimed to work for McDonald’s until she ran for president and painted the picture of her being from “middle class” roots, The Washington Free Beacon dug into Harris’ past to find evidence she has ever worked as a McDonald’s french fry cook as she has claimed.
“It is possible that Harris did indeed work at McDonald’s in the early 1980s,” according to the Free Beacon analysis of the McDonald’s mystery. “But the absence of that detail in public records and her campaign’s coyness and refusal to provide any further details raise questions about what is now a foundational narrative.”
But neither Mack nor the right-wing Free Beacon offered no proof that Harris never worked there — after all, few people keep memorabilia or other evidence of minimum-wage high school jobs, and it’s increasingly unlikely as the years go on that such evidence survives decades of moves and other upheavals. But Mack is such a Trump toady that will credulously repeat the most ridiculous claims he makes, like this:
At recent campaign rallies this week, Trump noted he has a well-placed friend at McDonald’s that has looked into Harris’ employment records at the company and has been unable to find any evidence. Trump said he has had to do the investigative research the media should have been doing to vet Harris’ claims.
Mack offered no proof of this, either.
As for the stunt itself, Newsmax unsurprisingly offered fawning coverage and fealty from Trump-toady talking heads:
Matt Schlapp to Newsmax: Trump McDonald’s Visit Shows Harris Not Ready
Danielle Alvarez to Newsmax: Trump ‘Leader for Working Americans’
Of course, Newsmax columnists joined the fawning over Trump’s trolling stunt. James Hirsen gushed in an Oct. 22 column (later re-dated to Oct. 28 for unexplained reasons):
It was an amazing sight to see.
Former president and current GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump dressed up in a white shirt, red tie, and black and yellow apron.
Very recently, he was hard at work at a McDonald’s franchise cooking up some French fries. A super-sized crowd was gathered nearby the fast food establishment, and they were “Lovin’ It!”
Footage of the former president serving up fries at McDonald’s almost broke the internet.
It was another unprecedented event for the surging Trump campaign.
[…]
Personally, I have to believe that most of the country as well as onlookers globally were equally impressed with the blue-collar billionaire, as well as the respect, admiration, and humbleness he displayed toward his “employer,” co-workers, and customers.
I don’t know if he meant to, but in those beautiful moments at a Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania McDonald’s franchise, Trump single-handedly re-ignited one of our most important values — the American work ethic.
[…]
When the value of work is celebrated by our leaders, our people are inspired to become more productive, which paves the way to a more prosperous nation. And that’s good for everyone.
Here’s to those who pitch in every way they can, those who step in when others can’t, and those who never fail to keep the French fries coming.
Trump only took part in his stunt for 15 minutes, meaning there was barely any “work ethic” on Trump’s part.
Josh Hammer did much the same in his Oct. 28 column:
But if Trump’s campaign was already on the up and up, his brilliant, pitch-perfect stop to serve hamburgers and french fries last Sunday at a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s might have sealed the deal. The 45th president of the United States ditched his signature suit for a chef’s apron, manning the fryer and dishing out Happy Meals to drive-thru customers.
Trump, a longtime McDonald’s aficionado, was affable and came across as genuinely thrilled to be interacting with the fast-food franchise’s employees and customers.
The main photo of the visit that went viral, which saw Trump smiling as he waved goodbye to a drive-thru customer, has emerged as this presidential cycle’s second-most iconic image — following only Trump’s mesmerizing raised fist and bloodied face in the aftermath of his brush with death on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Once again, Trump has proven he is the people’s billionaire — someone who, as I wrote for TomKlingenstein.com earlier this year, “may hold ‘elite’ ruling class credentials, but whose hearts, minds, concerns, and general sensibilities are decidedly with the country class.”
Hammer closed with more gushing: “Donald Trump, in short, has always been a class traitor. And following his large helping of french fries and Happy Meals in Pennsylvania, that class-traitor status may well win him a second term in the White House come Nov. 5.”
WND coverage
Oddly, WorldNetDaily offered little original coverage of the stunt — much of what it published was stolen from other right-wing outlets. Daniel McCarthy commented in an Oct. 22 column:
Trump isn't a soft-spoken campaigner, to say the least.
But his genius lies in combining galvanizing rhetoric with disarming humor.
He was in his element last weekend when he stopped by a Philadelphia-area McDonald's to try his hand as a fry cook.
Trump had a political point to make – he was teasing Harris about her claims to have worked for the fast-food giant when she was in college.
But that jab was secondary to the sheer merriment of having Trump don a cook's apron and learn to scoop fries, as the restaurant's regular employees looked on and smiled.
The scene spotlighted the kind of joy that's in short supply inside Harris' campaign.
The contrasting emotional resonances couldn't be sharper – Trump and the golden arches of America's most popular burger chain on one side, Harris and everything voters associate with Dick Cheney on the other.
A week before that visit, though, WND’s Bob Unruh wrote an Oct. 14 article mocking a visit by Bill Clinton to a McDonald’s because he was originally mistaken to be Joe Biden. Unruh cited the discredited Gateway Pundit claiming without evidence that “old Democrat” Clinton “suffered an embarrassing blow to his huge ego when a photo-op at an old favorite eatery backfired,” sneering that “How humiliating it must have been for Clinton to be compared to the dementia patient residing in the White House.” Unruh added:
The report noted McDonald's "has special significance" for Clinton, since he often stopped their earlier in his political career.
So important were those stops that Saturday Night Live created a skit poking jest at Clinton.
The report pointed out President Donald Trump's visits to fast-food eateries often are different from Clintons[.]
No real evidence of that was offered, however, outside of an amateur video of Trump at a McDonald’s. The difference is not that big of a deal, given that Trump is a self-promoting celebrity and Clinton hasn’t been president for more than two decades.