Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) issued a seemingly triggered response to former President Donald Trump working at a Philadelphia McDonald’s on Sunday.
Walz, the vice presidential running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, responded to a video of Trump wearing an apron at McDonald’s and learning how to make french fries. In his post on X, Walz referenced Harris’s unproven claim that she had previously worked at a McDonald’s.
“This guy spent decades stiffing workers pay, cut overtime benefits for millions of people, and opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage,” Walz wrote in his post.
“You know who has actually worked at McDonald’s, joined workers on picket lines, and fights for working people?” Walz added, “@KamalaHarris.”
Walz’s social media post criticizing Trump’s visit to McDonald’s where he learned to make french fries, served customers their orders, and spoke with several customers in the drive-through.
One customer told Trump that he and his wife were praying for him
“Thank you, Mr. President,” the customer said from the drive-through window. “You made it possible for ordinary people like us to meet you. Thank you so much for everything you are doing. We pray for you, and you are the type of person we want to be the president.”
The customer’s wife added: “Thank you for taking the bullet for us.”
“Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil, my native Brazil,” another customer told Trump.
“We’re going to make it better than ever,” Trump responded.
Trump’s visit to the McDonald’s comes as Harris has previously alleged that she used to work at a McDonald’s.
During an interview with Drew Barrymore, Harris was asked if “rumors” that Harris had worked at a McDonald’s were true.
“I did,” Harris said. “Yes, I did work at McDonald’s. When I was at school … I did fries. I did fries. I did fries, and then I did the cashier.”
Harris has also previously claimed during a labor rally in 2019 while running for president in the 2020 presidential election that she used to work at McDonald’s.
“I worked in McDonald’s,” Harris said at the time. “I was a student when I was working in McDonald’s.”
Harris’s claims that she used to work at a McDonald’s come as she has previously “never mentioned it” while campaigning or even put it in her “two books,” the Washington Free Beacon reported in August, adding that McDonald’s was also not listed on her previous job applications or resumes:
Harris’s work at McDonald’s, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area the summer after her freshman year in college, is a recent addition to her carefully curated life story. For decades, Harris never mentioned it, not on the campaign trail nor in two books. It’s absent from a job application and resume she submitted a year after she graduated from college. Third-party biographers did not write about it. Not until Harris ran for president in 2019 and spoke to a labor rally in Las Vegas did she mention the jobb, telling the crowd that she “was a student when I was working in a McDonald’s.”
A campaign ad for Harris from August also references the McDonald’s claim: “She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom, and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree. Kamala Harris knows what it’s like to be middle-class, it’s why she’s determined to lower healthcare costs and make housing more affordable.”
The Washington Free Beacon adds that while “it is possible that Harris” actually worked at McDonald’s when she was younger, the “absence of that detail in public records and her campaign’s coyness and refusal to provide any further details raise questions”:
Politicians who worked menial food service jobs as teens are often quick to mention it as proof of their working class bon fides. Future president Barack Obama, during his 2008 campaign, said his first job scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins in Honolulu instilled in himm the virtues of responsibility and hard work.
Trump’s visit to McDonald’s was also criticized by MSNBC host Alex Witt, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), who noted that “there’s no logic to it.”