Trump's Drive-Thru Shift at McDonald's Has Some People Skeptical of How Much Work He Put In

There has been plenty of talk about Vice President Kamala Harris's history with McDonald's, but now, her opponent in the 2024 presidential race has ties to the fast food chain as well. But did Donald Trump work at McDonald's? He was spotted at a Pennsylvania location slinging fries, but what about his younger years?

Harris has spoken out before about working at McDonald's to earn money while she was in college. While Trump and some conservative publications did their best to dispute her claims, now apparently, Trump has tried to level the playing field by working at McDonald's himself. But in the videos making the rounds on social media, this is far from a second job for the businessman and former president.

Long before Trump gained notoriety as a businessman and politician, he did not earn extra cash by working at McDonald's. More recently though, he did stop by a franchised location near Philadelphia, Penn. on Oct. 20 to show his support for the local business and to help work as a fry cook while also delivering orders to waiting customers.

Trump has repeatedly challenged Harris's claims of working at McDonald's when she was younger and his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Forbes why Trump chose McDonald's to reach voters, and why now.

"Because the people of Pennsylvania matter and jobs matter," he told the outlet. "Something Kamala Harris refuses to acknowledge."

Trump might have amassed a wild fortune himself, but he was also born into a family of privilege. And while other teenagers might have spent some free time working at McDonald's or other fast food establishments, Trump found himself in military school.

After Trump worked at the McDonald's location and even fielded questions from the drive-thru window, some users on X theorized that it was all one big setup. One user shared a picture of the printed out notice on the location's window, letting customers know it would be closed for Trump's arrival. The user took this to mean that the customers who visited during his "shift" at McDonald's were "staged."

A comment on that thread suggested, however, that the customers were real but were also heavily "pre-screened." Another user wrote in the thread, "He still did the work, people have tried to kill him so of course it was a secured scene. FYI, I'm not a Trump supporter, just a reasonable human."

Some believe that Trump didn't truly work at Mcdonald's, since he was shown doing the simplest of tasks that an employee would do and not the harder work involved in working an entire stressful shift.

Others have pointed out that Trump is a public figure who was already attacked in the public before and that having him in a McDonald's during the busiest hours with a ton of foot traffic just wouldn't be safe. Whatever the case may be, and whatever truth lies somewhere in the middle, Trump can now technically say that, like Harris, he has worked at McDonald's.