Former President Donald J. Trump worked the fryer at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday — an unusual campaign stop that fueled an onslaught of coverage from media outlets across the political spectrum.
Mr. Trump, a longtime fan of the fast-food chain, used the stop to claim, without providing any evidence, that Vice President Kamala Harris had lied about working at McDonald’s as a college student.
Ms. Harris has stated that she worked at a McDonald’s in California after her freshman year of college. A friend of hers backed up her account in a recent interview with The New York Times.
Conservative outlets painted Mr. Trump’s visit to McDonald’s as a brilliant move for the former president and as disastrous for Ms. Harris, praising him for a masterful “troll” of her campaign. They said that it aided Mr. Trump’s continued outreach to working-class voters, and that it made him look more approachable than Ms. Harris.
While only a handful of anti-Trump outlets covered the event, those that did described it as a bizarre and cheap stunt. They poked fun at Mr. Trump, comparing him to the company’s Ronald McDonald clown mascot. Typifying the anti-Trump response, the Drudge Report website ran an all-caps headline: “One Fry Short of Happy Meal! Felon Finds Work,” on the site, referring to Mr. Trump’s felony conviction.
Here’s how a few outlets covered the news:
FROM THE RIGHT
Breitbart
Breitbart, a conservative outlet, prominently featured news of Mr. Trump’s visit on its home page with the headline “McDonald Trump: Works The Fries, Drive-Thru in Philly.” Another headline asserted that customers were “Lovin’ It,” a reference to the company’s famous advertising slogan. The franchise was closed to the public during his visit; he handed food to some of the selected attendees.
In an article published on Sunday, the writer Wendell Husebo said the visit “underscores allegations that Vice President Kamala Harris never worked at a McDonald’s during her college career.” Around a dozen clips of Mr. Trump’s visit were embedded in the article.
FROM THE RIGHT
Townhall
Matt Vespa, a senior editor for Townhall, the conservative website, called the visit “one of the greatest political stunts of all time,” in an essay for the site. He also compared the appearance to a “Norman Rockwell painting.” By going to McDonald’s, Mr. Vespa wrote, Mr. Trump was highlighting Ms. Harris’s dishonesty, capitalizing on an opening that she had given him with working-class voters.
“All Democrats could do was cope and seethe, trying to dismiss it as odd, being oblivious that this is why they’ve lost working-class voters, the backbone of their party,” Mr. Vespa wrote. Like Mr. Trump, he had no evidence that Ms. Harris had lied.
FROM THE LEFT
‘Countdown’ With Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann, the liberal commentator, ridiculed Mr. Trump for his visit, comparing him to a clown on his podcast, “Countdown.” He said that the event was one that liberals like him saw as “a buffoonish disaster,” but that “his cultists and bosses think was a triumph of populism.”
“We are at that stage of madness where, oh by the way, Trump went to work at a McDonald’s yesterday, so at least McDonald’s got its clown back,” Mr. Olbermann said.
FROM THE LEFT
Meidas Touch
Writers and commentators at Meidas Touch, a liberal news and opinion site, strongly criticized Mr. Trump’s visit and the notion that it would help him with working-class voters. Ben Meiselas, the co-founder of the site, said on “The Meidas Touch Podcast” that Mr. Trump showed that he “doesn’t know how to work a frying machine at all.”
“Folks, this is what Donald Trump has done to our politics,” Mr. Meiselas said. “So bizarre, so degrading, so weird.”
In a news article published on Monday, the writer Troy Matthews called Mr. Trump’s stint at McDonald’s a “fake shift,” and brought up the fact that Mr. Trump did not support raising the minimum wage as president.
“Trump’s photo-op fake day of work cooking fries at a closed down McDonald’s makes a mockery of the hard working low-wage workers at those franchises,” Mr. Matthews wrote.
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