In another election cycle, a smiling, older gentleman putting on an apron and making small talk behind a fast-food counter would prove an anodyne political appearance. Even less than one week ago, Bill Clinton swinging by a McDonald’s only made headlines because a shocked employee mistook the septuagenarian former president for his octogenarian successor who is still (technically) in the White House.
But when former President Donald Trump took over a Pennsylvania McDonald’s to spend an afternoon in the shoes of America’s entry-level employment and serve some supporters in the swing state, the Republican presidential nominee’s Democratic opposition and the party’s hagiographers in the media took the bait, transmuting an unusually uplifting photo-op during an otherwise contentious election cycle into something sinister.
Or, as the New York Times opened its breaking news story, “Birtherism, meet burgerism,” branding Trump’s accusation that Vice President Kamala Harris lied when she previously claimed she worked at a McDonald’s in the 1980s “insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics.” CBS similarly deemed the appearance a “political stunt” predicated on Trump claiming “without evidence” that Harris didn’t work for the Golden Arches.
Some outlets, such as MSNBC, excoriated Trump for the “trolling exercise,” lambasting other reporters for describing Trump’s shift as “work” when actually “the people ordering the food had been carefully chosen to appear in some kind of clumsy political play.” (The Secret Service had to screen the customers in light of the two failed assassination attempts aimed at Trump in the past four months.)
Other magazines attacked McDonald’s directly.
Rather than discern whether or not Harris actually worked at McDonald’s when she said she did, the Washington Post did a deep dive into the specific location that hosted Trump on Sunday.
“In 2019 and 2020, activists called on Derek Giacomantonio, the franchisee who opened his doors to Trump on Sunday, to raise wages at one of his franchises in Philadelphia,” the Washington Post said. “Giacomantonio, who owns eight McDonald’s locations in the Philadelphia region, also lobbied against a state proposal to make more workers eligible for overtime.”
Newsweek deployed a London-based reporter to berate the franchise for previously failing a health inspection and parrot a baseless claim by Meidas Touch that Trump didn’t wash his hands before handling food at the branch. Another source, @CHERRYW00609336 on Twitter, was cited to accuse Trump of committing a “health and safety code violation.”
“McDonald’s didn’t give Trump permission to serve fries,” a sinister headline in CNN’s business section reads. “It didn’t have to.”
Vice presidential nominee and official Harris emotional support-cum-attack dog Tim Walz unfortunately has to attack Trump every time he breathes or belches, but the media industry doesn’t have to humiliate itself like this.
McDonald’s, both the international brand and the individual branches, have favorability ratings politicians would kill for. YouGov reports that McDonald’s boasts a new positive approval rating with a margin of 39 percentage points, and Morning Consult found that, by a 35-point margin, America believes McDonald’s has a positive effect on their own local communities. Seniors agree with this by a staggering 49-point margin.
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Our unusually divisive times may mean that a slim majority of the country dislikes both Trump and Harris, but the sane among us must avoid becoming so negatively polarized that we lose our damn minds over a lifelong fast-food aficionado getting the opportunity to serve some french fries to fans and hear from the, shall we say, “lived experiences” of the low-wage workers hardest-hit by the worst inflationary crisis in 40 years. Attack Trump is you must, but attacking McDonald’s, the brand, or worse, McDonald’s, the individual branch of hard workers who didn’t insert themselves into the national spotlight, is destined to backfire on a media whose credibility has already cratered.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
