Trump's McDonald's stunt reminds us Harris will be so much better on labor

Before we get started: Independent journalism is more important than ever. Become a Premium Subscriber to The Handbasket so you can help me continue producing quality work and holding the powerful to account. Click here to upgrade. And you can support my work here as well.

Looking for bonus Kabas content? I was a guest on a fun podcast! Listen here.

Donald Trump stopped by a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday for a highly-orchestrated publicity stunt that involved tossing some fries and working the drive-thru. Too many news outlets reported it credulously, while a scant few called out the more sinister undertones of him making a campaign stop to accuse—with zero proof—Vice President Kamala Harris of lying about working there when she was a student. 

We quickly learned that absolutely no part of the visit was organic: The MAGA faithful who drove up to the window were hand-selected by the campaign, and the whole place was shut down to the public at Team Trump’s request. It was about as real as the boardroom meetings on The Apprentice. 

It’s an astonishing fact that 1 in 8 Americans have worked at a McDonald’s, making it a cultural touchstone for a wide swath of voters. Trump has continually invoked his love of the fast food chain throughout his political career, yet this time he decided to wield it as a weapon. But what was he really trying to say?

When awkward images of Trump in a white button down shirt with a McDonald’s employee apron over it started rolling in across social media, I knew I had to talk to Adam Chandler, author of “Drive-Thru Dreams” and the forthcoming book “99% Perspiration.” Chandler has spent much of his career criss-crossing this country’s fast food establishments with great respect and care for the people they employ and the communities they serve, and he had a lot to say about Trump’s “cynical” stunt. “Fast food is a really great way to talk about the two differences between these two candidates,” he told me.

Below is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

MARISA KABAS: So I wanna start with a really simple and broad question to get your reaction to it: Why did Donald Trump go to McDonald's?

ADAM CHANDLER: It's a great question. It was just a stunt. There really was no message there other than “Kamala Harris is a liar” and that he loves McDonald's. And so it's kind of a metaphor for his empty calories, no nutritional benefit campaign. And he dodged questions about the minimum wage. 

KABAS: Why do you think he manned the fryer? Like, do you think there was any psychology behind that?

CHANDLER: I think Manning the fryers is something that people associate with the work of fast food—the drive-thru and the fryers. And those are the two things that he did. It's an easy job to do once, and it's not an easy job to do over and over again. So for a photo op, it kind of is a perfect thing. And he loves the fries: It's a standard part of his order. And everyone else loves the fries too. So to see him make the fries is probably special and meaningful to a certain part of the country.

KABAS: Do you think that part of the stunt was “Hey, look how easy this is to do”?

CHANDLER: I don't think that Donald Trump was eager to show that fast food work is easy. He said at one point that the people are great and they work hard. But it's weird because he's been saying all of these things that are meant to demean American labor recently. And he has obviously opposed policies and appointed people who oppose policies that would give fast food workers better benefits, paid sick leave, paid leave, a higher minimum wage. So he doesn't respect the work from a policy standpoint, but I think that most Americans think of it as good, honest work, even if the politics of it complicate that picture.

KABAS: Do you really think that people view it as a good honest job? Because it's often dismissed as just “flipping burgers.”

CHANDLER: Well, a lot of people have worked at McDonald's over the years, and the list is pretty impressive. Jeff Bezos comes to mind immediately. He still brags that he can crack two eggs with one hand because he worked a Saturday shift at McDonald's making egg McMuffins. A lot of people like to look back on it as something that they did in their youth when they were trying to climb the ladder. And that is something that I think Kamala Harris was also doing when she said she worked at McDonald's when she was getting herself through college. 

KABAS: You've been around the country and you've met a lot of different fast food workers. What are some things that people wouldn’t understand about what it means to work at a fast food restaurant?

CHANDLER: There's a lot of unpaid labor that goes along with being a fast food worker, and a lot of social skills that go into it. Fast food restaurants in a lot of places are community hubs. And that means when you're in a poor area where kids don't have Wi-Fi, they come in to do their homework there. When you're in an under-resourced area that doesn't have a senior center or good homeless infrastructure, that's where people end up. And so if you're a fast food worker, you're not just making fries, or cleaning out grease traps, or doing the drive-thru. You are also dealing with customers who are going through crises. You're being a community resource for people who are lonely.  And it's a job that can obviously be very rewarding but also very challenging. And I think that that's something that people don't realize; there’s so much extra work that goes along with it. And a lot of that comes without the benefits of paid time off, sick leave, health insurance. 

KABAS: Does the way Vice President Harris talks about working at McDonald’s as a student feel like a departure from the way other politicians explain their experience working there?

CHANDLER: Yeah. What I like about Vice President Harris's approach to it is that she talks about fast food, but she also joined striking McDonald's workers in Las Vegas. She supports raising the minimum wage. It's not just a biographical footnote meant to lend her gravitas. It's something that is meant to show, “I know what it means to struggle and work at a hard job that doesn't pay you well enough, and we should pay you more. We should give you more support.” And so it's really what makes what Trump did today seem so empty, because it wasn't really about any policy or broader ideal. It was just about calling someone a liar and making something else about himself. 

What Kamala Harris does is put it in the framework of what it means to struggle and what it means to make it in America, and her vision of that is obviously so different from the way that a lot of other people who've worked fast food jobs talk about it. And that's important.

KABAS: How would a Harris administration be better for fast food workers?

CHANDLER: Well, her whole posture around labor and around continuing a lot of the policies of the Biden administration would benefit fast food workers in large part because there is debt forgiveness and loan forgiveness that's happening for students. A lot of people are trying to level up and trying to find better jobs that will guarantee them a certain number of hours a week, their paychecks won't fluctuate, their schedules will be secure, and those are things that happen when you have the time to get certifications to look for new jobs.  I think that that's one part of it that's obviously important. 

But kind of zooming out on her broader economic message, she's invested in strengthening things like the child tax credit, which during the pandemic recognized that childcare is work. Also it gave people the opportunity to invest in their families in ways that you can't really do if you are jumping from ship to ship without any set schedule. So it's really about securing people's lives in ways that, unless you're in that situation, it's impossible to imagine. That is crucial to having them get to better places. And that's the fundamental vision of what she's offering, at least in my opinion. And in that way, the choice is clear. 

Now, if you own 10 McDonald's, there are obvious reasons why you want former President Trump to be in office. Because you're not gonna pay more for your labor, you're not gonna have to give more benefits, you're not gonna have to secure all kinds of things like set hours or secure scheduling or whatever things that might eventually be part of legislation or policy set by the various labor boards. And so that's where the battle falls. Fast food is a really great way to talk about the two differences between these two candidates because of that.

The way that policies are framed is that people don't wanna help themselves, it's a matter of character, that they just need to work harder and they'll get to where they're going. But if you look at what fast food workers are doing, who are just trying to make things work for themselves, it's not a question of how hard you're working. You're working really, really hard. It's just the circumstances are increasingly impossible.

KABAS: It's kind of amazing that Donald Trump, the poster boy for nepotism and having things handed to him, is somehow a symbol of, “if you work really hard, you can figure it out.”

CHANDLER: It's laughable and sad at the same time. But hopefully people can or will see through this. It would be more fun to have this be a more nuanced conversation about what this all means if there were actual substance to what he was saying or doing. And there just isn't. It's just so cynical.

KABAS: We're having the nuanced conversation.

CHANDLER: Yeah, of course. But that's why The Handbasket is special. And that's why the headlines that are making this seem like he did some heroic, populist, bold—it was a stunt, but it's not being framed as a stunt. It's being framed as a campaign gambit to show his working class bona fides. That's not what it is though. He was there for 10 minutes and all he really did was take a shot at Kamala Harris and that's the end of the story. But we get to have the conversation because you're a great journalist and you're asking tough questions, but for most people this event won't register and it'll just be something that plays into the information silos that we’re fed.

KABAS: I feel like we should just end on that really high note, about me being an amazing journalist.

CHANDLER: Great! Go out on a high note.

I will say that in spite of all this, I still like McDonald's. I still think the fries are great. The new chicken Big Mac is not that great. But I still think that you can find out a lot about your life around you and your community by going to McDonald's.  And it really points out things that will surprise you. When you see old men hanging out with no place else to go at a small Burger King in Kansas, or when you see people getting off the night shift at a McDonald's in Brooklyn—which is what I loved experiencing when I lived down the street from one—you see it's not just the workers who are working hard. A lot of people who pass through the doors are also working hard and they're just trying to get by and that's what fast food is. 

So we have to be careful not to demean people who eat fast food because, like everyone else, they're just trying to get by. There is a cultural elitism that we're bucking against, and it's important to have these nuanced conversations, too, because that's how Trump can become a caricature of a working class, every man. Because he likes McDonald's. 

KABAS: And it feels like his McDonald's eating habits are “respected” because he's so rich. Otherwise he would just be some guy eating fast food.

CHANDLER: Exactly. He has an appetite for things that aren't sophisticated, but that's also not a reflection of his character as a person. You can still be a jerk and work at McDonald's. You can still be a jerk that owns a McDonald’s. You can still be a jerk and eat at McDonald's. It's very democratic in that way.