CNN —
In the final days of his third bid for the White House, Donald Trump is bringing one of the most iconic American companies, McDonald’s, into the political arena.
The former president is expected to stop by one of Pennsylvania’s fast-food chains as he strolls through the Keystone State on Sunday. He will work there as a fry attendant, CNN reported last week.
It’s the same job Vice President Kamala Harris said she had as a young woman, details of her career revealed during her first presidential campaign. It has since become central to her middle-class origin story, which has been key to her pitch to voters as the Democratic presidential candidate.
While President Trump has a well-documented deep love for the Golden Arches and its facilities, he has become increasingly obsessed with Harris’ employment there. In interviews and on the campaign trail, he regularly accuses Harris of fabricating facts, without evidence. His restaurant visit is his latest attempt to cast doubt on his Democratic career.
“I’m going to McDonald’s to make fries,” President Trump told supporters at a rally in the Pittsburgh area on Saturday. “I think I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll be standing on some fries somewhere in Pennsylvania.”
Harris has largely ignored Trump, fielding calls from supporters and inquiries from conservative news outlets demanding she provide proof of her stay. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment about Trump’s accusations or his upcoming visit to McDonald’s.
Campaign officials told CNN that Harris worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, Calif., in the summer of 1983, when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington. Officials said she worked the cash register and was in charge of the french fries and ice cream making machine.
On Drew Barrymore’s talk show earlier this year, Harris told Drew Barrymore: I also worked as a cashier. ” And as a 2019 presidential candidate, Harris referenced her job at the fast food chain while joining striking McDonald’s workers on a picket line.
Her time there was mentioned repeatedly on stage at the Democratic National Convention this summer, as her allies contrasted her upbringing with Trump’s upper-class roots. Former President Bill Clinton joked that Harris “will break my record as president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.” Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett claimed that “one of the candidates worked at McDonald’s,” while “the other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
“Can you easily imagine Donald Trump working at McDonald’s?” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate. “If it costs anything, he won’t be able to run that damn McFlurry machine.”
Over the years, Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned his rivals’ records, often without merit. He was one of the most vocal figures in debunking the “birther” movement, which falsely called into question Barack Obama’s citizenship and eligibility for the White House, ultimately leading to the Hawaii-born led the president to release his lengthy birth certificate. During the 2016 Republican primaries, Mr. Trump promoted an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father aided in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This election cycle, Mr. Trump falsely suggested that the Republican front-runner, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, and that Mr. Harris had embraced her black heritage. made false claims that it was only recently.
But even as Trump made these accusations, he peppered them with exaggerations and fabrications about his own personal stories. He coined the phrase “exaggeration of truth” in his best-selling autobiography, The Art of the Deal, an oxymoron to describe his relationship to facts about himself. I’m doing it.
“This is harmless exaggeration and a highly effective form of propaganda,” he wrote.
In a 2007 deposition, lawyers revealed that Trump lied at least 30 times over a two-day period, mostly about matters such as the size of his workforce, his speaking fees and the cost of golf memberships. It was a commonplace fact about his business. He also claimed that he stood on the rubble at ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and paid employees to remove the rubble, but neither of these claims are supported by public records. It has not been done.
There are also multiple accounts that President Trump called reporters using the pseudonym “John Barron.” This person is said to be an executive of a company that once deceived a Forbes magazine reporter and inflated President Trump’s wealth in the magazine’s list of richest people.
It’s unclear why President Trump insisted on hiring Harris at McDonald’s, or why she needed to visit McDonald’s during the few weekends left before Election Day. But President Trump has suggested in recent interviews that he shouldn’t ignore small details about his rival’s past.
“We would say that’s not a big lie. It’s a big lie,” Trump said, “because McDonald’s was a part of everything she was.”
President Trump also visited a McDonald’s in East Palestine, Ohio, early in his presidential campaign, where a train carrying hazardous materials derailed, sparking an environmental and public health crisis. So he joked to the woman working the register, “I know this menu better than you.” I probably know that better than anyone here. ”
The former president has long expressed an affinity for fast food. During a 2016 CNN town hall, Trump, a self-described “very clean person,” attributed his preference for his company’s products to quality control, saying, “I’d rather go there than go to a store where I don’t know where the food is.” It’s better to go to.” It comes from. ”
“I think the food is good. I think Burger King, McDonald’s, all those places are bearable,” he added. “I had Kentucky Fried Chicken the other day. It’s not the worst thing in the world.”
Trump took that love to the White House, where he once served a hamburger and pizza buffet to Clemson’s national championship football team. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, quipped in his autobiography that Trump knew he had turned a corner in the fight against the coronavirus when he requested an order from his favorite McDonald’s.
“McDonald’s Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, French fries and vanilla shake,” Kushner said.
Donald Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News last week and lamented that the network did not ask Harris in her interview which McDonald’s she worked at. He also claimed that his father’s knowledge of the chain’s products would be better than that of the Democratic candidate.
Trump Jr. said, “I think my dad knows a lot more about McDonald’s menus than Kamala Harris.”
CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Kate Sullivan and Ebony Davis contributed to this article.
