Ronald McDonald isn’t the only clown at McDonald’s.
Hamburglar isn’t the only crook.
And Grimace isn’t the only jiggly blob.
All three rolled into one strolled into a Pennsylvania McDonald’s last week in the form of Donald Trump — the Orange Grimace — so he could pretend to work a fry station for 20 minutes and insult his presidential foe, Kamala Harris.
Between her freshman and sophomore collegiate years four decades ago, the Democrats’ presidential nominee worked the summer of 1983 at a California McDonald’s, taking orders, bagging fries, and making ice cream cones (as long as the ice cream machine wasn’t broken).
Without any proof, Trump keeps saying that’s a lie.
Trump — whose favorite meal is two Big Macs, two Filet O’Fish sandwiches, and a large chocolate shake — believes he’s the real champion of the Mickey D’s set. To draw scrutiny away from real issues, Trump’s campaign staged a fake 20-minute shift at a McDonald’s so the Big Lie Guy could be a Big Fry Guy.
With the restaurant closed for the day, Trump engaged in an episode of minimum-wage tourism.
The 78-year-old real-estate developer — who was gifted $413 million by his daddy and never had a working man’s job — was allowed to stand by the fry station, scoop fries into McDonald’s emblematic red paper cartons, and hand out sacks of food to pre-screened fans at the drive-through window of a restaurant that was closed for the day.
For safety reasons, Trump wasn’t allowed near the grill, fryer oil, or anything that might cause his face makeup to melt.
“I’ve really wanted to do this all my life,” Trump lied to reporters who witnessed these fast-food theatrics. “This is fun, I could do this all day.”
For a man of lifelong privilege who resides at a country club, poops on a golden toilet, and consorts with porn stars, that’s a strange desire and an even stranger thing to say.
This shirt is available on the Trump campaign store for $42.
Many self-made and successful people legitimately toiled under the Golden Arches in their youth to put a few bucks in their pockets. (As did I back in 1985–86.)
Olympic athlete Carl Lewis. Singers Macy Gray, P!nk, Shania Twain, and Pharrell. Actors James Franco, Rachel McAdams, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Sharon Stone, and Mark Hamill. Comedians Jay Leno and Keenen Ivory Wayans. Billionaire Jeff Bezos. Journalist Katie Couric. A few politicians even got some grill time, including former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Ohio congresswoman Martha Fudge, and President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card.
McDonald’s estimates one in eight Americans has punched a time clock in one of the company’s 13,500 restaurants.
For tens of millions of teens and college students, a job at Mickey D’s has been a rite of passage. So it’s not far-fetched for Kamala Harris to have worked one summer at a McDonald’s as a college kid, as she’s claimed.
The duties she described to reporters — taking orders, making fries, dispensing ice-cream cones — represent the standard front-counter job tasked to all the personable people with nice smiles who knew how to make proper change. The rest of us were in the back, flipping burgers, toasting buns, opening pickle buckets, unloading delivery trucks, sanitizing everything in sight, and coming home smelling like onions and grease.
Some media outlets have weirdly pointed out that Harris hasn’t produced any pay stubs, old uniforms, name tags, or photographs to prove her claim. Really? Who keeps stuff like that? McDonald’s doesn’t even keep 40-year-old employment records.
(By the way, those same reporters aren’t asking why Trump, running as the GOP nominee for the third time, still hasn’t released any tax records as every other presidential candidate has since the 1970s.)
Aside from a bun-toaster burn scar on my forearm, I couldn’t prove I worked there, either.
“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,” Harris said in an interview in September.
I remember working with those people, too, grown men and women with families, some of whom worked two jobs to make ends meet. Those people worked hard, too. Unlike some of us teenagers who goofed around when the managers weren’t looking, the grownups were all business all the time.
Why would Trump lie about this? Well, why wouldn’t he? He lies about everything.
This lie and campaign stunt were weird distractions guaranteed to get press attention because McDonald’s is ubiquitous and deeply ingrained in American life. With billions and billions of burgers sold — the company stopped listing the actual number on signs 30 years ago — almost everybody in America has eaten McDonald’s.
Trump’s lie is a way to undermine Harris’s claim she’s the candidate who better understands and empathizes with everyday working people.
And if we’re talking about his nonsense, then we’re not talking about serious issues.
We’re not talking about the centerpiece of his economic plan, tariffs on imports, which essentially is a tax paid by consumers, not foreign countries.
We’re not talking about tax cuts for his billionaire enablers.
We’re not talking about the dozens of Nobel Prize economists who say Trump’s agenda will likely tank the economy and dramatically balloon the national debt.
We’re not talking about how the Trump administration’s heavy hitters — Mike Pence, John Kelly, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mark Milley, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, many national security officials, and hundreds of others who worked closely with him — say he’s dangerous, incapable, incurious, unintelligent, unfit for office, and should not be sent back to the White House.
We’re not talking about his cruel and fascist ideas or his increasing mental instability.
And we’re not talking about how Trump’s entire life history is antithetical to the work ethic and ideals of working-class people, how he is anti-union, has a long history of stiffing his contractors, would do away with the 40-hour workweek, and openly mocks the idea of paying overtime or fair wages.
When he walked into that closed restaurant, the first words out of Orange Grimace’s mouth were “How much are you going to pay me?”
When Trump left, Fry Guy For A Day told reporters, “I want a raise.”
Even on Trump’s day of minimum-wage tourism, the man could not genuinely put himself in someone else’s shoes and talk about what working people need. He couldn’t talk about how he’d create jobs, whether he’d hike the federal minimum wage, or what he’d do to help the people who really work at a McDonald’s.
To do so would require empathy.
Trump’s first and last thoughts were of himself — and what he could put into his own pocket.
And guess what? Trump is cashing in by selling $42 MAGADonald’s t-shirts in his campaign store.
Would you like fries with that?
