McDonald’s Refutes Trump’s Claim About Kamala Harris’ Employment: ‘No Record of Harris Ever Working Here’
ABC; BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES
Donald Trump’s recent assertion that McDonald’s issued a statement denying Vice President Kamala Harris ever worked for the fast food giant was debunked on Monday. The Washington Post reported that McDonald’s had not made any such statement in response to Trump’s claim.
The controversy stems from a comment Harris made about a summer job she held while attending Howard University. Harris mentioned working at McDonald’s between her freshman and sophomore years, a passing remark that Trump has since seized upon, repeatedly calling it false.
Trump’s campaign even staged a photo opportunity at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania over the weekend, where he donned an apron and cooked French fries for supporters. During this event, Trump took to TruthSocial to post, “We have checked with McDonald’s, and they say, definitively, that there is no record of Lyin’ Kamala Harris ever having worked there. In other words, she never worked there, and has lied about this ‘job’ for years.”
However, The Washington Post’s Philip Bump questioned Trump’s leap to such a conclusion, noting the difficulty in proving short-term employment from more than 40 years ago. Bump pointed out the flaw in Trump’s logic, saying, “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.”
McDonald’s, while keen to avoid the political fray, issued a statement acknowledging the situation. “Though we are not a political brand,” McDonald’s wrote, “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 company’s reference to “1 in 8” refers to the number of Americans who have worked for McDonald’s at some point in their lives. In his analysis, Bump concluded, “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.”
