The 2024 presidential race is heating up, and former President Donald Trump is continuing to make headlines with his latest campaign strategy. This weekend, Trump is making an unusual campaign stop: working the fry station at a McDonald’s restaurant in battleground Pennsylvania.
This unexpected move appears to be a direct response to a claim Trump has repeatedly made against his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump insists that Harris never worked at McDonald’s, despite Harris’s own statements about her experience working at the fast-food chain during her undergraduate years in the 1980s.
In a Friday interview on ‘Fox and Friends’, Trump said, “I’m going because she lied. You don’t think she ever worked in McDonald’s? I know she didn’t. We checked it out. They said she never worked here.”
Harris, on the other hand, has highlighted her middle-class upbringing and her time working at McDonald’s as a testament to her understanding of the struggles of working-class Americans. In a recent MSNBC interview, Harris said, “I have [worked at McDonald’s]. 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. I worked there as a student. I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs.”
With just over two weeks until Election Day, the race between Trump and Harris remains tight. Trump’s McDonald’s visit and his continued attacks on Harris’s background suggest a strategy focused on drawing attention and emphasizing a contrast in their respective experiences and backgrounds. Whether this strategy will resonate with voters remains to be seen, but it’s undoubtedly a move designed to stir up controversy and generate headlines in this increasingly heated election cycle.