FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. — Donald Trump walked into one of his favorite restaurants Sunday and declared he was “looking for a job.”
He certainly is, though not the one that he occupied during the photo op that followed. Trump’s stop at the McDonald’s in suburban Philadelphia, where he worked the fryer and handed bags to preselected drive-thru customers, was a play meant to attack his opponent and give the billionaire candidate some credibility with the working-class voters he needs to win back the White House.
The visit married his two fixations: his well-documented affection for fast food — McDonald’s in particular — and a more recent pattern of accusing Vice President Kamala Harris without evidence of lying about a summer job working at McDonald’s.
Harris’ campaign said she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, in 1983 during the summer after her freshman year at Howard University. A friend of Harris’ recently backed up that account, telling The New York Times that the vice president’s mother, who died in 2009, had told her about the summer job years ago. McDonald’s representatives have ignored media requests for information.
Yet Trump, known for wildly speculating about the backgrounds of his political opponents without proof, repeated the claim as he addressed reporters from a drive-thru window in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania.
Trump, the son of a wealthy real estate developer, told reporters he long dreamed of working at the golden arches and he listened attentively as an employee explained his fryer technique.
Trump, wearing shirt sleeves and an apron, nodded as he was told how to avoid grease burns, how to add salt and how to keep from touching french fries as he slid them into a glossy red container.
When it was time to bag an order, he asked a woman at the drive-thru what they did when a customer wanted more salt. “I love salt,” he said, as he shook some onto golden potatoes. Then, after spilling some, he paused to throw some over his shoulder in a nod to superstition, a gesture that likely would have been unappreciated by managers had Trump been any other employee.
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