Let's stipulate that this is hardly the most important issue facing voters as they make their choices over the next few weeks. It's a sideshow. And candidly, it was one in which I had very little interest. Donald Trump has been trolling Kamala Harris over her claim that she worked at a McDonald's while in college, "doing french fries and ice cream." She never mentioned this before her first presidential run in 2019, having apparently avoided any discussion of this ostensible element of her biography until that point. Trump has alleged this is a made-up story. Harris insists it's true. I really didn't care one way or the other. My working assumption, while mostly avoiding the whole silly kerfuffle, was that Harris probably did work under the Golden Arches at some point. Her running mate invents stories about himself all the time; despite he many flaws, I didn't really associate flat-out resume inventions with Harris. Plagiarism is a different story. But I will admit that following Trump's successful photo-op/troll at a Pennsylvania McDonald's over the weekend, my doubts are increasing about the veracity of the story.
If the Harris campaign had a shred of evidence that she's telling the truth about this -- anything at all, including former co-workers' accounts, a single photograph, anything out of the company's record-keeping books, etc. -- the perfect day to have deployed it would have been Sunday. That would have taken the air out of Trump's amusing ploy. That didn't happen. The New York Times assigned multiple reporters to cover this "issue," and despite framing their coverage as Trump making claims "without evidence," they couldn't find any actual proof backing up Harris' assertions, which was surely their goal in this journalistic endeavor. This line set me off:
In no way is Trump questioning an unsubstantiated claim about Harris' past "outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics." Whether it's "insidious" is probably more subjective, but the word seems bizarrely hyperbolic. As as John Hasson points out, the Times' big story didn't really help Harris at all, on the merits of this whole, dumb flap:
Recommended
What we learned this week re: Kamala’s McScandal:
- Her campaign wouldn’t give the *New York Times* evidence that she worked there
- The best evidence that SIX NYT journos found was a childhood friend—who lived in a different country when Kamala had the alleged job—saying Kamala’s (now deceased) mom mentioned it
- It’s driving lib journos nuts that they can’t prove she worked there all while her campaign begs them to call Trump a liar w/o evidence
See the UPDATE below. It gets better. Meanwhile, despite a "fact check" from Democrat-aligned Politifact, it looks like McDonald's doesn't actually have records of the Vice President working there:
McDonald's has finally revealed why it does not have records to verify Vice President Kamala Harris' claim that she worked at one of its restaurants in the 1980s. In a memo emailed to McDonald's USA franchisees the corporation confirmed that while Harris had 'fond memories' of working at a location in Alameda County, 'we and our franchisees don't have records for all positions dating back to the early '80s.' A copy of the internal letter was posted by an anonymous McDonald's franchise on social media and confirmed by the Wall Street Journal...The campaign has been unable to provide evidence to prove the vice president's claim, such as a photo, a pay stub, or a fellow employee that can confirm her employment. Employees at the franchise in Alameda, California, told the Telegraph they have been sworn to secrecy not to speak about Harris to reporters. An employee said 'I'm sorry, I don't have any information,' when DailyMail.com contacted them on Monday to ask if Harris had ever worked at the franchise location. Harris never spoke about working for McDonald's until she ran for president and protested with fast food workers in 2019 to raise the minimum wage.
Harris also apparently declined to mention her claimed McDonald's gig on a job application back in the 1980's. She was asked to list every position she'd held over the previous decade, and curiously neglected to include the fast food job she now says she had during that time frame:
She didn't list a recent McDonald's job when she was asked to include all proper work positions on a job application in the '80s. She never mentioned the job throughout her entire political career...until she was doing a big minimum wage push, while running an exceptionally pander-heavy presidential campaign. And she can produce no actual evidence that she ever worked at the chain, except for a recollection from a childhood friend who says Harris' now-deceased mother once mentioned it, or something. Can't her campaign and its vast resources clear this up? Is it odd that they haven't been able to do so, even with the help of a small army of journos, eager to prove Trump wrong. Might they use this a fact-finding tool?
Rating change: My previous assumption that Harris probably did work at a McDonald's has officially moved from 'Lean D' to 'tossup.'
UPDATE - Just amazing:
New @FreeBeacon: The Canadian woman who told the New York Times that Harris’s dead mother mentioned her McDonald’s job is a campaign surrogate who has been to the White House and shares the stage at rallies. The New York Times did not disclose any of thishttps://t.co/U8PQOkCTQn
— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) October 23, 2024
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