FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, PA — FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pennsylvania (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump On Sunday, he roamed the fry station of a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania before holding an impromptu press conference, answering questions from reporters through the window of his car.
After an employee showed Trump how to dip French fries in oil, the former president took his turn and even helped him fill a few carry-out bags.
“It actually takes a lot of expertise to get it right and get it done quickly,” Trump said with a smile.
The visit came as criticism intensified Democrat Kamala Harris and deepened his claim—it was made without offering evidence—that he never had He worked at a fast food chain in college — the experience he mentioned during the campaign.
“I appreciate it a little more. You say, “Give me the fries.” I will never forget this experience”. said Trump.
In the exchange between journalists, he was asked, among other things, whether he would respect the results of the November 5 election. Trump, who still refuses to admit that he lost In the 2020 election of Democrat Joe Biden, he said he wants this year’s victory to be so overwhelming that the results are “too big to manipulate”.
Trump visited a McDonalds in Feasterville-Trevose, which is in Bucks County, a swing area northeast of Philadelphia. Trump is a longtime fan of the Big Mac and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches; his employees often take McDonald’s and serve it on his plane.
Later Sunday, Trump attends an evening town hall in Lancaster before catching the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.
McDonald’s owner, Derek Giacomantonio said, “A core value of my organization is to proudly open our doors to all who visit the Feasterville community.”
He said in a statement that this is why he accepted Trump’s request to “observe the transformative work experience that 1 in 8 Americans has had: working at McDonald’s.”
As Trump said to reporters as he stepped off the plane, “I’ve wanted to do this all my life.”
Trump has in recent weeks been fixated on the summer job Harris did in college working the cash register and making fries at McDonald’s while attending Howard University in Washington. Trump says the vice president “lied” while working there, but has offered no evidence to back that up.
It is the latest example of his long-standing strategy to exploit conspiracy theories and cast doubt on the credentials of political opponents.
Police cordoned off busy streets around McDonald’s during Trump’s visit. Authorities cut off the restaurant from a crowd that had gathered a couple of blocks long, sometimes 10 to 15 deep, trying to catch a glimpse of Trump across the street. Horns blew and music played as Trump supporters waved flags, made signs and took pictures.
Harris, who was a California prosecutor before becoming a senator and vice president, touts his McDonald’s experience as a way to show that he understands the struggles of the working class.
“When Trump feels down, all he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams said Sunday. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter to blow away.”
In an interview on MSNBC last month, the vice president pushed back on Trump’s claims, saying he worked at the fast-food chain four decades ago while in college.
“Part of the reason I talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people in our country who work at McDonald’s, trying to raise a family,” he said. “I worked there as a student.”
Harris also said, “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent involves our perspective on the needs of the American people and then our responsibility to meet those needs.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, told reporters Saturday that Trump’s stop would show he “connects with working Americans.”
McDonald’s representatives did not respond to a message asking if the company had any employment records at any of its restaurants 40 years ago.
This is far from the first time Trump has promoted baseless claims. Most notably, he falsely claims that he lost Biden due to voter fraud. Trump said during his presidential debate with Harris that immigrants who settled in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
Trump has long gone after opponents based on their personal history, particularly women and racial minorities.
Before running for president, Trump was the leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy, which claimed that President Barack Obama was of African descent, not an American citizen, and therefore ineligible to be president. Trump used it to raise his political profile by asking to see Obama’s birth certificate and five years after Obama did, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States.
During his first run for president, Trump repeated in a tabloid that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s father, who was born in Cuba, was connected to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Cruz and Trump competed for the party’s 2016 nomination.
In January of this year, when Trump was facing Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the UN, in the Republican primary, he shared a message on his social network with false posts that said that Haley’s parents were not citizens at birth, so it became impossible. to be president
Haley is a native of South Carolina, the daughter of Indian immigrants, automatically becoming a natural-born citizen and meeting the constitutional requirement to run for president.
Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican strategist, said using a campaign visit to focus on claims about McDonald’s from four decades ago is an “amazing detour” but that Trump is “not stuck throwing anything at the wall to see if he’s stuck.”
“When Donald Trump isn’t talking about the economy and illegal immigration, he’s talking about things that people care about,” Marson said.
Marson suggested that Trump would be better off talking about the economy and immigration, something he called “off topic.”
“I don’t think there’s any undecided voter who will answer or make up their mind based on whether or not Kamala Harris actually worked at McDonald’s in the 1980s,” Marson said.
