US Elections 2024: Former United States President and present Republican party nominee Donald Trump visited a McDonald's outlet at Feasterville-Trevose in swing state Pennsylvania, and worked the fry station before addressing media through the drive-thru window, according to an AP report.
Trump has often expressed his love for fast food, especially McDonald's Big Macs and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, the report added.
His move came in opposition to rival Kamala Harris sharing her time working as a McDonald's employee when in college — something Trump alleges that she is lying about. In another jibe at Harris, speaking from the drive-thru window, Trump claimed: “I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala at McDonald's”
Wearing an apron over his shirt and tie, Trump watched as an employee demonstrated hot to dunk a basket of fries in oil, salt them and scoop them into boxes for customers, and then tried some steps himself, videos shared by the Trump campaign showed. “It requires great expertise, actually, to do it right and to do it fast,” Trump said.
Reacting to the move, tech billionaire Elon Musk shared a video of the former US president's McDonald's outing, stating: “This is awesome”
Trump's moonlighting at the outlet drew large crowds as the Republican nominee served a few customers at the drive-thru, as per the report. The restaurant itself was closed during his visit and he addressed a town hall in Lancaster in the evening.
Notably, Feasterville-Trevose , is part of Bucks County, a key swing voter area north of Philadelphia, while Lancaster is the home of American football team the Pittsburgh Steelers against the New York Jets, the report added.
The McDonald’s location’s owner, Derek Giacomantonio, said in a statement, “It is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community. That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s.”
Speaking to the media from the drive-thru, Trump, who has falsely and continously claimed that he won the 2020 election against Joe Biden, said he would “respect the results” in November 2024, “if it's a fair election”, AP reported.
When asked what message he had for Harris on her 60th birthday on Sunday, Trump said, “I would say, ‘Happy Birthday, Kamala’. I think I’ll get her some flowers.”
He did not directly answer a question about increasing minimun wage, instead saying, “These people work hard. They’re great. I just saw something … a process that’s beautiful.”
At the end he quipped, “Wasn’t that a strange place to do a news conference?”
Trump has long questioned Harris' story of working at McDonald's without proof and McDonald’s representatives did not respond to a message about whether the company had employment records for one of its restaurants 40 years ago, the report added.
However, Harris spokesman Joseph Costello criticised Trump's day out as a McD worker stating: “(He) showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain.”
“Trump doesn’t understand what it’s like to work for a living, no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second term plan is to give himself, his wealthy buddies, and giant corporations another massive tax cut,” Costello said in a statement.
Trump has made many false statements against his opponents in the US elections race besides Harris. These include former US President Barack Obama, Republicans Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley.
(With inputs from AP)
