Kamala Harris and McDonald's: A College Job, and a Trump Attack - The New York Times
By: Heather Knight and Nicholas Nehamas (nytimes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris never worked at the fast-food chain. Her campaign and a friend say she did.
By Heather Knight and Nicholas Nehamas
Heather Knight reported from Alameda, Calif., and Nicholas Nehamas from Washington.
- Oct. 20, 2024
Birtherism, meet burgerism.
Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald's 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.
But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Mr. Trump's latest allegation also appears to be false.
Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump's seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris's story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.
It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.
ImageFormer President Donald J. Trump is an avid eater of fast food. In 2019, as he hosted college football players at the White House, he fed them McDonald's. Credit...Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times
Mr. Trump, an avid eater of fast food who even catered a White House celebration from McDonald's in 2019, is scheduled to visit a McDonald's location in the Philadelphia area on Sunday. "I'm going to McDonald's to work the French fries," he said on Saturday in Latrobe, Pa. Asked why, an aide, Jason Miller, told reporters, "So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald's."
Ms. Harris’s campaign said that she was an employee of the McDonald’s on Central Avenue in Alameda, Calif., in 1983 during the summer after her freshman year at Howard University, working the cash register, french-fry station and ice cream machine. It has provided little information beyond that, including how long she worked there. She also mentioned her job at McDonald’s when she ran for president in 2019.
As with the birtherism conspiracy theory, this one puts Ms. Harris and her aides in something of a bind. Tracking down pay stubs or other documentation from so long ago would be a difficult task for almost anyone. McDonald’s corporate representatives have ignored media requests for corroborating information. And trying to knock down Mr. Trump’s claims could also breathe life into them.
The campaign did not make any of Ms. Harris’s friends or family members available for interviews about their recollections of her experience there.
But The New York Times interviewed a friend who had known Ms. Harris as a teenager and remained in touch with the family for years afterward. Wanda Kagan, a close friend of Ms. Harris’s when they attended high school together in Montreal, said she recalled Ms. Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time.
Answering questions by email, Ms. Kagan said that Ms. Harris’s mother, who died in 2009 , had told Ms. Kagan about the summer job years ago. Ms. Kagan said she herself had also worked at one of the fast-food chain’s many franchises in those years.
“That’s what us regular folks did,” Ms. Kagan wrote. Still, she indicated that it had not been a frequent topic of conversation for Ms. Harris. “We didn’t talk much about our McDonald’s days back then,” she said.
Ian Sams, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said Mr. Trump’s claims were typically false.
“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Mr. Sams said. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”
Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held, according to a copy of her résumé from 1987 when she applied for a summer position at the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Her other work experience listed on that document includes an internship with former Senator Alan Cranston of California, a student assistant position in the public affairs office at the Federal Trade Commission and a summer clerkship at a San Francisco law firm.
The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s — a fact that The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, used to suggest that she had never worked there , and which seems to have propelled Mr. Trump’s claim that she made up the job. The summer of 1983 is not listed on the résumé at all. It is also unclear, of course, why Ms. Harris would have included a fast-food job on an application for a legal position.
In subsequent years, Ms. Harris talked so little about her long-ago job at McDonald’s that even some of her friends and close aides did not know she had worked there. She also did not mention the job in her memoir, although she talked extensively about her time at Howard and the various jobs mentioned on that old résumé.
The first time Ms. Harris appears to have prominently brought up her summer job was during her first presidential campaign in 2019, as she joined striking McDonald’s workers on a Las Vegas picket line calling for a $15 minimum wage.
“If we want to talk about those golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, well, the arches are falling short,” Ms. Harris said back then .
On the campaign trail this year, she has mentioned the job to underscore her middle-class roots and her support for workers. She has also pointed to it as a contrast with Mr. Trump, a billionaire who inherited his wealth.
“She grew up in a middle-class home,” one early campaign ad said . “She was the daughter of a working mom. And she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree.”
Ms. Harris has said that McDonald’s was just a summer job to earn spending money. She has often noted that many Americans rely on such low-paid work to support themselves and their loved ones.
“Some of the people I worked with were raising families on that paycheck,” she said during an economic policy speech in August. “They worked second or even third jobs to pay rent and buy food.”
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Donald Trump, someone who has been convicted of fraud, and in another case paid 25 million dollars in a settlement to the victims of the Trump University fraud, Donald Trump, who has claimed championship golf trophies in "tournaments" at his golf courses where he was the only contestant, who had fake Time magazine covers created with his picture on the cover that he hung on the walls of the golf course clubhouses and dining rooms, Donald Trump, that lent his name to a multi-level marketing scheme (Ponzi scheme), and on and on and on, accuses Harris of fluffing her early work history? The sad part is not Trump making these pointless claims about Harris, the sad part is he can convince some people to care about this nonsense.
"...he can convince some people to care about this nonsense."
He really does get some of you all lathered up over nothing burgers.
When Harris made the claim, she couldn't recall which McDonalds and there doesn't seem to be a record of it.
Our dishonest media could solve it quickly if they went out and got the records from McDonalds, but for some strange reason they haven't!
No one with half a brain cares about this.
But please tell us why Trump cheats at golf and claims championships of tournaments that were not legitimate .
So why did you bring it up in the first place?
Exactly.................SMH
Because your hero Trump made a big deal out of it YESTERDAY. Do any of you ever actually see the news of the day?
They have not been able to produce a single photo, pay stub, financial record, company record, or a single solitary coworker who worked with her or witness who saw her there.
No one cares, but Trump and some of his demented followers. He does have the nerve to accuse someone else of more or less innocent lying (if it even is a lie) when he has a history of lying a thousand times longer. I notice you did not reply to comment 1 here.
People do care as opposed to the haters who simply want to defeat Trump at all costs.
When I applied for a job at a Law Firm, my time at McDonald's and Baskin Robbins were first on my resume!!!!!!!!!!!
"But Mr. Trump's seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris's story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud"
There is not a shred of proof that she ever worked at a McDonald's. There is no fair play when it comes to political campaigning, and Trump's attempts to portray Harris as a fraud is succeeding. Has Trump ever been treated fairly?
Considering that he is the most crooked, corrupt, unethical, and dishonest major party presidential candidate in American history, yes he has been treated fairly.
Why would there be? No one is saving their pay 40 year old fast food pay stubs.
Would you care if there were any evidence?
The most prolific liar, criminal, and vulgar name-caller in the history of American politics keeps being treating as if he were a serious person. No one has ever been treated so much better than they deserve.
After all the shady, unethical and illegal shit he's done he's been treated fairly well. If any of the Dems had found to have fake businesses and charities as Trump has they would be laughed at and run out of Washington. Trump could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his MAGA sycophants would find a way to justify kissing he ass.
Her campaign and a friend, well hell. That settles it................./S
Given the hysteria from the left about a campaign stop, you know this was effective.
This article shows the extent of the hysteria.....too funny.
Are they mad that he is doing it? or are they mad at how effective it is?
National : President: general election : 2024 Polls | FiveThirtyEight
As they should. I’m sure MAGAs eat a shitload of cheeseburgers. You don’t want to give them any reason to go all “bud light.” Telling the truth just makes them mad.
LOL. You don't want one of the maga's favorite fast food joints corroborating that bullshit - they'll boycott!
Trump has claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris never worked at the fast-food chain.
The media is demanding Trump prove a negative.
Why doesnt he just keep his mouth shut?
Why is the media demanding he do the impossible? Why not ask Harris to prove her own claim?
How, exactly? This was over 40 years ago. How would she prove it?
For that matter, why does she need to? It's not like she's claiming she was Queen of England, or CEO of Apple. Why would someone need to lie about working at McDonalds as a teenager? I mean, I know a lot of people pad their résumés, but no one pads it with McDonalds. The opposite in fact. They pad their résumés because they don't have any better experience than that.
Make your conspiracy theory make sense.
Lol. Ask yourself how Trump would proved she didn't?? Again, she's the one who made the claim and the media is demanding TRUMP prove it false.
You understand about proving a negative, right?
but no one pads it with McDonalds
You can't figure out why someone running for President would want to claim they helped put themselves through school while working at McDonalds?
My Social Security Benefits estimates showed my wages and amount collected starting with my first paid job.
That’s not what’s happening here. There are ways a person might prove she never worked there. If, for some insane reason, tax or payroll documents could be found and her name was absent, that would be evidence she didn’t work there. If friends knew her to be unemployed at that time. If she was seen traveling Europe during the period. If she was known to be independently wealthy, it might reduce the plausibility of her claim.
Trump is stating she never worked there, as if it were a fact. Not simply that he doesn’t believe it. Like everything else in his career of bullshit claims, he has zero evidence. He doesn’t even have weak evidence, like a rumor, or a mysterious alleged witness. He has zero evidence. There is no basis for his claim.
On the other hand, her claim is backed up by a witness, in addition to her own first hand testimony of her experience. Furthermore, it’s highly plausible given the other things we know about her upbringing, like where she lived, and her economic situation.
She’s been saying it for years. It didn’t start when she ran for president.
Feel like sharing your records with everyone? I wouldn’t.
I’ve seen Harris’s tax returns. Her SSN is redacted, which is fine, because they’re official documents, plus they have lots of other information that self validate them.
Even if she could release Social Security documents in the same way (and I don’t know if that’s workable), she’d still be redacting the number, in which case people inclined to support this conspiracy theory still wouldn’t accept them.
You asked how she could prove it, I told you how.
If a person didn't make more than the standard deduction, they are not required to file a tax return which is often what happens with young people first joining the work force and working part time while still in school. So, if that was the case for Harris there would be no record of her work at that time and thus no way she could prove she worked at McDonalds unless she kept her pay stubs from over forty years ago.
I cannot prove I worked for the first five jobs I had because I didn't make more than the standard deduction at the time. I worked delivering newspapers, I worked part time at a bicycle repair shop, did occasional work for a janitorial company since the owner knew my parents, mowed many lawns, even had a few regular house cleaning jobs all before I turned 18 and graduated high school and started paying taxes once I earned more than the standard deduction. Could I prove any of that? Nope, I don't have a single pay stub from that time period over 45 years ago.
It's frankly ridiculous that anyone is making an issue out of this. Who the fuck really cares whether she worked briefly at a McDonalds or not over 40 years ago, those refusing to give her the benefit of the doubt are clearly just sad little pieces of shit desperate to please their lord and master Donald Trump.
Don't make the allegation unless you can back it up.
Simple.
It is pathetic that Trump supporters are trying to make this into a big deal. Scraping the barrel on the Ds while supporting / defending the most prolific liar of our times.
Whether she's lying or not about working there is not a big deal. It's almost as big a nothing burger as Trump holding a photo op in a McDonalds which has broken the left's brain the day and a half.
The story is the media claiming it's Trump's responsibility to prove a negative,which is in this case impossible.
will you just stop. trump has a long list of saying things he could never prove, or didnt prove.
he said he had sent detectives to hawaii to investigate obama's birth and they were finding "incredible" things. never revealed who these detectives were or what they "found".
Tessylo often says the right is defending the indefensible and she has a good point.
Then why is this being pushed by Trump supporters? This is absurd.