Donald Trump was seen hanging out at the drive-thru window at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday, which could prove to be the most enduring visual (that doesn’t involve a gunshot wound) of the 2024 campaign — Trump in a crisp apron serving fast-food customers Happy Meals and fries while cutting it up with wait staff and customers alike.
Trump put on an apron and is handing customers food through a McDonald’s drive thru window pic.twitter.com/B4eCsjApTq
— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) October 20, 2024
It was a brilliant political stunt — it mocked Kamala Harris’s unverified claims that she worked for a few months at a McDonald’s, got Trump in front of and around Americans as he did work that most low- and middle-class people can recognize (and capitalized on Trump’s charisma), and followed the Harris campaign’s compiling numerous instances of shameless, low-effort pandering.
More than that though, Donald Trump the Fry Guy solidifies Trump’s bona fries as a man whose tastes are the same as those of regular Americans, in contrast with the calorie-concerned, saturated-fat-fussing that has become the norm for upper-middle-class Democrats who would rather be caught necking with the nanny than in line at a McDonald’s (imagine the embarrassment). The modern Left’s taboos are focused on what does or does not go in a body — leading the list are babies, nicotine vessels in cartons with government warnings, and the contents of fat-soaked bags pulled up at the second window.
Donald Trump is a boor and won’t bring back the $1 McDouble, but he has the same appetite and palate as the everyman. Voters tend to prefer politicians who don’t treat their tastes with contempt, and Trump’s team managed to get a supersized win on a Sunday (more than Walz’s Minnesota Vikings could manage).