Birtherism, meet burgerism.
Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.
But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.
Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.
It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.
Mr. Trump, an avid eater of fast food who even catered a White House celebration from McDonald’s in 2019, is scheduled to visit a McDonald’s location in the Philadelphia area on Sunday. “I’m going to McDonald’s to work the French fries,” he said on Saturday in Latrobe, Pa. Asked why, an aide, Jason Miller, told reporters, “So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”
Ms. Harris’s campaign said that she was an employee of the McDonald’s on Central Avenue in Alameda, Calif., in 1983 during the summer after her freshman year at Howard University, working the cash register, french-fry station and ice cream machine. It has provided little information beyond that, including how long she worked there. She also mentioned her job at McDonald’s when she ran for president in 2019.
As with the birtherism conspiracy theory, this one puts Ms. Harris and her aides in something of a bind. Tracking down pay stubs or other documentation from so long ago would be a difficult task for almost anyone. McDonald’s corporate representatives have ignored media requests for corroborating information. And trying to knock down Mr. Trump’s claims could also breathe life into them.
The campaign did not make any of Ms. Harris’s friends or family members available for interviews about their recollections of her experience there.
But The New York Times interviewed a friend who had known Ms. Harris as a teenager and remained in touch with the family for years afterward. Wanda Kagan, a close friend of Ms. Harris’s when they attended high school together in Montreal, said she recalled Ms. Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time.
Answering questions by email, Ms. Kagan said that Ms. Harris’s mother, who died in 2009, had told Ms. Kagan about the summer job years ago. Ms. Kagan said she herself had also worked at one of the fast-food chain’s many franchises in those years.
“That’s what us regular folks did,” Ms. Kagan wrote. Still, she indicated that it had not been a frequent topic of conversation for Ms. Harris. “We didn’t talk much about our McDonald’s days back then,” she said.
Ian Sams, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, said Mr. Trump’s claims were typically false.
“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Mr. Sams said. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”
Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held, according to a copy of her résumé from 1987 when she applied for a summer position at the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Her other work experience listed on that document includes an internship with former Senator Alan Cranston of California, a student assistant position in the public affairs office at the Federal Trade Commission and a summer clerkship at a San Francisco law firm.
The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s — a fact that The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, used to suggest that she had never worked there, and which seems to have propelled Mr. Trump’s claim that she made up the job. The summer of 1983 is not listed on the résumé at all. It is also unclear, of course, why Ms. Harris would have included a fast-food job on an application for a legal position.
In subsequent years, Ms. Harris talked so little about her long-ago job at McDonald’s that even some of her friends and close aides did not know she had worked there. She also did not mention the job in her memoir, although she talked extensively about her time at Howard and the various jobs mentioned on that old résumé.
The first time Ms. Harris appears to have prominently brought up her summer job was during her first presidential campaign in 2019, as she joined striking McDonald’s workers on a Las Vegas picket line calling for a $15 minimum wage.
“If we want to talk about those golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, well, the arches are falling short,” Ms. Harris said back then.
On the campaign trail this year, she has mentioned the job to underscore her middle-class roots and her support for workers. She has also pointed to it as a contrast with Mr. Trump, a billionaire who inherited his wealth.
“She grew up in a middle-class home,” one early campaign ad said. “She was the daughter of a working mom. And she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree.”
Ms. Harris has said that McDonald’s was just a summer job to earn spending money. She has often noted that many Americans rely on such low-paid work to support themselves and their loved ones.
“Some of the people I worked with were raising families on that paycheck,” she said during an economic policy speech in August. “They worked second or even third jobs to pay rent and buy food.”
The post Kamala Harris and McDonald’s: A College Job, and a Trump Attack appeared first on New York Times.
