Letting an Old Man Play in the Drive-Thru Doesn’t Help Workers

Donald Trump staged a photo op on Sunday in which he pretended to work at a McDonald’s in an effort to troll Vice President Harris for having the nerve to understand what it’s like to work your way up from a middle-class background in a single-family household.

Like everything Donald Trump does, the whole event was fake. And like everything the legacy media does, it was reported breathlessly as Donald Trump working a shift, as though he has ever been interested in doing anything physically difficult a day in his life.

The McDonald’s location where the photo-op occurred was closed to the public and packed with supporters pre-screened by the Secret Service. The people who went through the drive-through did a practice run before the cameras started rolling and had to try to act surprised the former president was handing them their food. The supporters were also not allowed to make an actual order but instead came around so Trump could hand them a pre-packaged meal. He was there for all of 30 minutes.

Donald Trump and his allies think it’s funny to accuse Kamala Harris of lying about working at McDonalds. That’s because Donald Trump began his career with over $400 million from his father and was immediately sued by the Justice Department for discriminatory, racist rental practices. Kamala Harris is from the middle class and had to work her way up to achieve what she has. See how that’s funny?

But the most nefarious part of this stunt is how it mocks the concept of work, denigrates those who work in the service industry, and attempts to mask the deep-seated hatred Donald Trump has for people he thinks are beneath him, all while refusing to support policies that would actually help working people.

At the event, Trump was asked about whether he would support raising the minimum wage. He answered, “Well, I think this. These people work hard. They’re great. And I just saw something – a process that’s beautiful.” Fantastic. The kind of thing socio-economic tourists say when they visit less fortunate places.

The truth is that Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he would not support raising the minimum wage. Donald Trump’s Project 2025, which was written by over 140 former Trump staffers and advisors explicitly targets workers. The plan makes it easier for employers to avoid paying overtime by, among other things, allowing them to redefine the amount of time that makes up work week. In other words, employers could pick and choose the time frames they use to measure work hours — no more standard 40-hour workweek.

Donald Trump himself has been repeatedly accused of not paying overtime. His last administration passed a rule that significantly decreased the number of people eligible for overtime. His next administration would undo the Biden administration’s expansions of overtime pay.

Kamala Harris is running on a platform that supports higher wages and expansions of overtime pay to help create an opportunity economy. She was not given the $400 million head start Donald Trump received. She understands the struggles and values of the middle class in a way the former president simply cannot. And for that, he has to lash out and lie.

Fox News’s Peter Doocy said of the stunt, “There’s just no record of her being there or not being there. To our knowledge, there’s no photo of her in the McDonald’s apron, which now there is a photo of Donald Trump in the McDonald’s apron.”

Because all of us remember those good times when we loaded up a camera with a roll of film to document every time we went to our minimum-wage jobs. There are not enough eye rolls for that statement.

Just like there aren’t enough eye rolls to address the idea that Donald Trump cares about working people.

Don’t believe the hype, Donald Trump is thoroughly linked to Project 2025. In 2022, he told attendees at a Heritage Foundation conference, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.“