Donald Trump’s claim that McDonald’s issued a statement claiming Vice President Kamala Harris never worked for the fast food giant was debunked Monday.
The Washington Post reported that McDonalds denied making such a response to the Trump camp.
Harris has said that she worked at McDonald’s one summer between her freshman and sophomore years in school at Howard University. Though a throw away comment by Harris, Trump has latched onto the tale — and repeatedly claimed it was untrue.
Over the weekend, Trump’s campaign closed down a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania to use it for a photo opportunity as he donned an apron and cooked French fries — apparently for his supporters in a drive-thru.
“We have checked with McDonald’s, and they say, definitively, that there is no record of Lyin’ Kamala Harris ever having worked there,” Trump wrote Sunday on TruthSocial. “In other words, she never worked there, and has lied about this ‘job’ for years.”
But the Post’s Philip Bump called that Trump’s ” rhetorical jump”, hitting the ex-president’s conclusion based on lack of documentation of short-term employment more than 40 years ago.
Bump went on to compare Trump’s claim to the following: “If America’s collective memory and documentation of its history suddenly evaporated, we could prove that Trump was never president, since no record of his having done so exists.”
Bump said management of the “Golden Arches” isn’t happy with the attention.
“Though we are not a political brand,” a statement from McDonald’s says, “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. 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.”
The reference to 1 in 8 is to the number of Americans who have worked for McDonald’s at one point in their lives.
“We end where we started,” wrote Bump. “There is no reason to think that Harris didn’t work at McDonald’s in 1983 and … every reason to think that Trump’s suggestion that she didn’t is offered in bad faith and without evidence. ”
Read the full column here.
