Staff at a branch of McDonald’s have been sworn to secrecy about whether Kamala Harris ever worked there after Donald Trump accused her of lying.
Employees at the franchise in Alameda, California told the Telegraph they had been instructed by bosses not to talk about the Vice-President, after claims that she invented her summer job to appear more authentic to voters.
Trump visited a franchise of the restaurant in Feasterville, Pennsylvania on Sunday, and cooked fries in one of the branch’s fryers. The dine-in restaurant was closed to the public to accommodate his visit, but the drive-thru remained open.
“This is fun, I could do this all day,” he said, after serving a customer from the hatch. “I wouldn’t mind this job.”
Donning a McDonald’s apron, he asked an employee: “Do I take off my jacket? The press wants to see this.”
He was then instructed on how to cook and season the fries.
Trump put on an apron and is handing customers food through a McDonald’s drive thru window pic.twitter.com/B4eCsjApTq
— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) October 20, 2024
Harris has spoken repeatedly about her time at the restaurant, and says her job there during her university degree in the 1980s inspired her to support working families.
“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family,” she told MSNBC last month.
“I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility then is to meet those needs.”
Trump, in his element, at McDonald’s. pic.twitter.com/orGjai1dWI
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 20, 2024
Harris said she first “did fries” at the restaurant and then worked as a cashier to help pay for her law degree at the University of California.
It is not known which branch in Alameda Harris worked at, but at one location, on Shore Line Drive, the Telegraph understands the owner asked staff not to speak about Harris after the branch began to receive calls from journalists looking to verify Harris’ claim.
Trump, who is a long-time fan of the fast-food restaurant, has said Harris’ summer job was invented to improve her credentials with working-class voters. McDonald’s claims that one in eight Americans has worked in one of its branches.
The former President told supporters at a rally in Detroit on Friday that Harris “lied about working at McDonald’s”.
“That’s like not a big thing, but can I be honest with you, it’s terrible,” he said.
Ahead of the trip, the Trump campaign sent a press release promoting a story from the Washington Free Beacon, which reported that Harris did not mention her job at McDonald’s on her CV when applying for a job as a law clerk in the Alameda County district attorney’s office in 1987.
Neither Harris nor Trump have offered proof of their claims about her job there. In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, he said he had asked the restaurant’s owner about it.
“I know she didn’t [work there],” he said. “We checked it out. They said she never worked here. She even picked the store. We went to the manager. The manager’s been there forever.”
Harris did not mention the job in either of her memoirs, published in 2010 and 2019, and appears to have first revealed the job during a rally in Las Vegas in 2019.
McDonald’s, which is by far the largest restaurant chain in the US by sales volume, has a long history of being used by politicians seeking authenticity.
Trump made headlines in January 2019 when he served a platter of Big Macs and fries to the Clemson University football team at the White House.
His own order includes two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate milkshake, according to a 2017 book by his former aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.
Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan all visited branches of the restaurant on the campaign trail, while Hillary Clinton opted for Chipotle.
McDonald’s declined to comment.