McDonald’s has waded into the controversy over whether Vice President Kamala Harris ever worked at its restaurants when younger.
In an internal memo issued Sunday in response to former President Donald Trump working a shift at a restaurant in Pennsylvania, the fast food chain admitted that it can neither confirm nor deny Harris’ former employment status.
“Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches,” the memo reads.
“While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes ‘1 in 8’ so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had,” it continues.
This is an internal statement to the McDonald’s system from the US Senior Leadership Team regarding today’s visit by the Trump campaign to a local franchisee in Pennsylvania. The statement outlines the origins of the event, the company’s response, and an invitation extended to… pic.twitter.com/1GntbmDbbY
— McFranchisee (@McFranchisee) October 20, 2024
Even the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump has also confirmed this.
“Last month, in an effort to unearth evidence of Harris’s employment, I tried to contact McDonald’s and the owners of the franchises on the island of Alameda, where she worked,” he wrote in a report Monday.
“But 1983 was in the pre-digital-data era, and employment records for short-term workers at franchised fast-food chains from that period were almost certainly not considered essential documents to retain. I was able to find no evidence of her employment,” he added.
But Bump, a known left-wing propagandist, then continued his piece by ostensibly debunking Trump’s repeatedly made claim that Harris never worked at McDonald’s. His proof? A mere hunch.
“There is no reason to think that Harris didn’t work at McDonald’s in 1983 and, as demonstrated above, every reason to think that Trump’s suggestion that she didn’t is offered in bad faith and without evidence,” he wrote.
And there’s no reason to think that Harris ever did work at McDonald’s, but Bump conveniently chose to not mention that.
Trump for his part responded to McDonald’s memo by posting a statement to Truth Social dubiously claiming this proves “she never worked there, and she has lied about this ‘job’ for years.”
Look:
Trump said something similar while on shift at McDonald’s this Saturday.
“I’ve now worked [at McDonald’s] for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” he said while standing at the drive-thru window.
Watch:
‘I have now worked here 15 minutes longer than Kamala’ pic.twitter.com/VWa7Vhi2DV
— Being Libertarian (@beinlibertarian) October 20, 2024
A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee later doubled down on this sentiment in a statement to Newsweek.
“Lyin’ Kamala lied about ever working at McDonald’s and she is now lying about President Trump’s historic moment making delicious French fries at a McDonald’s in battleground Pennsylvania,” they said.
What makes Harris’ claim that she worked at McDonald’s baffling is that, besides there being no records to confirm this, she never once before touted her job — not even in her resume.
“For decades, Harris never mentioned it, not on the campaign trail nor in two books,” according to an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s absent from a job application and résumé 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 job, telling the crowd that she ‘was a student when I was working in a McDonald’s,'” the Beacon’s reporting continues.
Yet Harris’ campaign has been trotting out the unconfirmed McDonald’s job claim for months.
“Vice President Harris is the daughter of a working mother and worked at a McDonald’s to put herself through college,” a campaign spokeswoman said in August.
Meanwhile, a pro-Harris super PAC ad claimed she “work[ed] her way through school at McDonald’s.”
Even former President Bill Clinton is guilty of touting her possibly fictitious record. While at the Democrat National Convention in late August, he joked that “she’ll break my record as president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
Listen:
Former President Bill Clinton brings up Kamala Harris’ old part-time job at McDonald’s:
“I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president, because she will break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.” pic.twitter.com/R9Keq9Za5a
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) August 22, 2024
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