The Press Can’t Handle Trump’s Brilliant Display Of Retail Politics

The press was hysterical after former President Donald Trump manned the drive-through window at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s Sunday and genuinely looked like he was having a blast.

“I think I might come back and do it again,” Trump said after handing off another bag of fast food. When the next car pulled up, Trump went on to chuckle about being shot in the face this summer when a passenger said, “Thank you for taking a bullet for us.”

The Republican presidential nominee walked into the franchise restaurant in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, Sunday “looking for a job.”

“I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s,” Trump said in a TikTok video shared on X. “I never did.”

The campaign stop was characteristic of a president who famously served the iconically American chain’s burgers and fries to champion football players in the White House five years ago. His brief shift behind the fryer allowed the ex-president to interact directly with voters while taking a dig at Vice President Kamala Harris’ alleged fast-food résumé embellishment.

In August, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Harris likely fabricated her experience as a McDonald’s fry cook after she failed to mention the job in any of her political memoirs. The first time Harris laid claim to the fast-food gig was during a 2019 workers’ protest in Las Vegas when she first ran for president.

“I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump joked from the drive-through booth.

The Sunday panelists on MSNBC were incredulous that Trump’s Pennsylvania pit stop had any “logic” to it, despite the fact that Trump’s brief stint as a fast-food worker was an obvious and effective troll of his opponent’s own authenticity.

Newsweek’s Khaleda Rahman responded to Trump’s fryer shift by publishing a hit piece targeting the local franchise where the former president served fries, proclaiming that the “McDonald’s Donald Trump Worked at Failed Last Health Inspection.”

Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, meanwhile, went on ABC’s “The View” to claim Trump’s experience cooking and delivering food with minimum-wage restaurant workers was somehow “disrespectful” to them.

The New York Times and Forbes reacted to the substance of the campaign trip by placing the burden of proof on Trump to disprove Harris’ apparently mythical career as a fast-food restaurant worker. Both papers complained Trump’s charges about the Democrat’s lack of evidence to support her résumé experience came “without evidence.”

“Birtherism, meet burgerism,” the Times stated, characterizing Trump’s biographical claims (which go right to the heart of Harris’ authenticity) as “outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics.”

The paper didn’t respond with any verifiable evidence that Harris had actually worked at McDonald’s, just assertions that Trump is unkind to cast doubt over whatever Harris says.

“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,” the Times read.

The paper never corroborated Harris’ time at McDonald’s, beyond repeating the testimony of a single friend of the vice president’s who said she recalled Harris working at McDonald’s sometime around the time they attended high school. McDonald’s, however, has shown no records that Harris ever worked for the company, which the Times excused because “trying to knock down Mr. Trump’s claims could also breathe life into them.”

In other words, The New York Times deployed the full force of the paper’s investigative resources to prove Harris worked at McDonald’s, only to come up empty and claim Trump is a liar anyway. Trump is so effective that the Democrats and the media can’t handle it.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.