Onlookers are left scratching their heads and wondering after former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Sunday campaign stop at a McDonald’s in a suburban Philadelphia suburb. Trump has been fascinated by the fast food company for years, so the Golden Arches photo opportunity was by no means chance.
In a location in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, Trump switched his suit jacket for a yellow-lined apron and alternated between dipping baskets of fries in oil, salting them, and scooping them into boxes—the well-known germaphobe was delighted that it “never touches the human hand”—and passing bags of food to a select group of patrons via the drive-thru window. Trump’s play-acting at work coincided with his obsession with Democratic contender and vice president Kamala Harris’s allegation of a brief stint at McDonald’s in the 1980s, which Trump has denied ever happened.
Trump seems determined to dispel any idea that his opponent would have a closer bond with a company he has long loved and supported—and a powerful representation of the American working class.
“I’m a huge McDonald’s fan,” Trump declared. “I like to see good jobs, and I think it’s inappropriate when someone posts about her time working at McDonald’s all over the place.”
n an apparent attempt to strengthen her working-class credentials, Harris and her campaign have claimed that during a summer in 1983 while attending college, she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, operating the register, fry station, and ice cream machine. Trump has frequently claimed on the campaign trail that she is a liar, despite the lack of supporting proof (allies have cited a resume that mentions McDonald’s). In a recent article, the New York Times summed up the candidate’s long history of challenging his opponents’ histories by saying, “Birtherism, meet burgerism.” Trump declared, “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” as he stood at the drive-thru window on Sunday.
The fast food chain has become a strange point of competition for the Trump campaign. Speaking to Fox News last week, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father “knows the McDonald’s menu much better than Kamala Harris ever did.” That may actually be true given the public evidence of just how much he enjoys their food. In early 2023, Trump himself said the same thing to McDonald’s staffers in East Palestine, Ohio—“I know this menu better than you do”—before buying meals for frontline responders to the hazardous chemical accident caused by a train derailment in the area.
In his 2022 biography Breaking History, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said that his father-in-law’s order from the fast food business indicated that he was getting better after he got COVID-19 in 2020. When he asked for one of his favorite meals—a McDonald’s Big Mac, Filet-o-Fish, fries, and a vanilla shake—I knew he was doing better, Kushner wrote. In their 2017 book Let Trump be Trump, former Trump campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie said that the former president’s favorite McDonald’s meal was “two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted [shake].”
According to a 2017 Politico article, Trump’s former bodyguard and confidante Keith Schiller frequently visited the McDonald’s by the Marine Air Terminal during the 2016 campaign.
There are a number of seemingly connected reasons why Trump has such a deep affection for McDonald’s and fast food in general. According to Michael Wolff’s 2018 book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Trump “had a longtime fear of being poisoned.” According to Wolff, Trump thought that “nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade” when he dined at McDonald’s.
Trump, for his part, has used food preparation standards to defend his preferences. “I’m a really tidy person. Cleanliness appeals to me, and I believe it’s preferable than going somewhere where you might not know where the food is coming from. At a town hall in 2016, Trump told CNN, “It’s a certain standard.” “You can ruin McDonald’s with just one bad hamburger.”
