Kamala Harris’ McDonald’s Story Called Into Question as Details Don’t Seem to Add Up
The summary discusses claims made by Vice President Kamala Harris about her past experience working at McDonald’s while pursuing her degree. According to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, investigations into the veracity of her claims have yielded no supporting evidence. The report highlights that Harris mentioned this job for the first time publicly in 2019, coinciding with her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite assertions in her campaign advertisements and public statements that she worked at McDonald’s, there are no records or mentions of this job in her two memoirs or a 1987 job application for a position at the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.
Various critiques suggest that while Harris’s narrative about her working-class background appears compelling, the absence of corroborative evidence raises questions about its authenticity. Fact-checking organizations and critics have noted the need for additional verification, including employment records or confirmations from acquaintances. The ongoing discourse reflects the complexities of public narratives and how they are sometimes scrutinized in political contexts.
Like a burger without the meat, the well-told tale of Vice President Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s appears to be missing something: some proof.
The Washington Free Beacon sought to find a shred of evidence that the tale was real and reported that it came up empty.
Harris has been banking on the tale to connect with voters, according to The New York Times.
According to one Harris ad she was “the daughter of a working mom” and “worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree.”
For the record, Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan was a cancer researcher at UC Berkeley working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, People noted.
Although a report in The New York Times said Harris worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, a city near Oakland, the Free Beacon said it could find no proof.
Kamala lying about working at McDonald’s would be the dumbest thing possible to lie about. But there doesn’t appear to be any record she ever worked there. https://t.co/1ZPwrWwZTI
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 29, 2024
The outlet, which said it has tried to find verification from McDonald’s but not received replies, noted that the lack of any mention of the job in any documents it reviewed does not mean Harris did not work where she now says she did, only that it can’t be proven as yet.
The Free Beacon report said its review of comments Harris made about the job found that the first public mention of working for McDonald’s was in 2019 when she was launching her failed campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The job goes unmentioned in both of her memoirs, published in July 2010 and January 2019. Two biographies also do not mention the job.
Dan Morain, who wrote “Kamala’s Way: An American Life,” said he was unaware of the McDonald’s job.
NEW: The Harris campaign has given shifting accounts of her “summer job” at McDonald’s.
So we looked for evidence of it. She doesn’t mention it in her memoirs, & did not list it on a 1987 job application we obtained. more w/ @SaysSimonson @AndrewKerrNC https://t.co/GAWRaQ2s3O pic.twitter.com/EyUP8bfj33
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) August 29, 2024
The Free Beason said Harris’s October 1987 job application for a job at the Alameda County district attorney’s office also does not have a whiff of the Golden Arches.
Instructed to list every job held in the past 10 years, Harris — who was in law school at the time — noted a one-month clerical job but never mentioned McDonald’s.
The fact-checking site Snopes would not call the claim fraud, but reported that it was “researching” the claim.
“Harris has made this claim repeatedly over the years, and multiple reputable news outlets have reported on the story. But, aside from Harris’ testimony itself, there is no evidence (such as a photo, employment record, or confirmation from a friend or family member) to independently verify the claim,” it wrote.
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