Trump at McDonald's: ‘This is entertainment - and it’s working for him’
| Updated:
Donald Trump pretended to work at a fast food restaurant this week, but why do stunts like this continue to boost his popularity?
Listen to this article
Read time: 4 mins
In brief...
- Donald Trump served fries to pre-selected customers in Pennsylvania, claiming Kamala Harris’s accounts of having worked in a fast food restaurant as a student were false.
- The News Agents say this stunt, and his comments about a dead golfer’s penis, are examples of “Trump the entertainer”, and exactly what his supporters want from him.
- They say Kamala Harris has no response to these attacks, and should be hammering him with her policies as he continues to make personal digs.
What's the story?
McDonald's doesn't endorse either candidate in the upcoming US election, but this week Donald Trump took a shift at one of its restaurants in a campaign stunt.
"I could do this all day," the Republican candidate and convicted felon said as he shovelled fries in a Pennsylvania fast-food outlet.
The McDonald’s was closed for the event, and everyone involved (including customers) had been screened by the US Secret Service. No one ordered anything, and instead took whatever they were handed by Trump, according to US reports.
It has been seen as an attempt to discredit Kamala Harris having once worked in a McDonald's restaurant when she was a student.
“I’ve now worked 15 minutes more than Kamala,” he said through a drive-through window.
“She never worked here”.
Why ‘Trump the entertainer’ is working for the Republicans
Trump’s McDonald’s stunt is all part of what his supporters have come to love about the right-wing MAGA politician. It’s more entertainment than it is politics.
“Of course the whole place had been shut down,” says Jon Sopel.
“Let's not pretend it was a normal day at McDonald's where Donald Trump turns up and suddenly takes over flipping burgers. No, that wasn't what was happening at all, it was Donald Trump as entertainment.
“The Donald Trump rallies are entertainment. People go to have a laugh.”
He adds that they don’t care about “the macroeconomic circumstances of the United States of America and what's going to happen next with the Federal Reserve” and instead just love hearing his “rambling, off-colour stories”.
And these recently included talking about the penis size of a dead golfer, Arnold Palmer.
Speaking in the former pro’s hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he began speaking about how other golfers would react to the sight of Palmer in the showers.
“This is where we have got to two weeks out from the US election,” says Emily.
“It is a whole new kind of crazy, but it doesn't seem to be hurting Donald Trump.”
If anyone else went out in public and talked about these things, she adds, they would have the keys to their car taken away.
“You would not put them in charge of a hair dryer, you would not want them out loose on their own,” she says.
What’s The News Agent’s take?
While Kamala Harris has spent her campaign trying to convince voters of her capability to become America’s next president, Donald Trump has spent much of his time spreading misinformation, and now, talking about genitals and pretending to work in fast food restaurants.
Polling still puts both candidates neck and neck in the election race, raising questions about why one is held to such a high bar, while the other is held to almost no bar at all.
“We are at a place where – genuinely – we're spending time deconstructing this because we think it might even be helping Donald Trump to win,” says Emily.
“And part of that, I guess, goes back to something that we all saw eight years ago, which is that he has a different way of speaking than any other politician on earth.”
She adds that while Joe Biden would row back from his mistakes and apologise, Trump will double down - as he did with his lies about migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
And perhaps most concerning? His supporters don't seem to care.
"They like the fact that he said it. But then you see polling numbers supporting the mass deportation of illegal migrants.
"Truth is irrelevant. But he's talking to a wider truth about illegal immigration, that people have a dark sense of. He appeals to that dark sense.”
But, Emily adds, there may be a bigger problem for Harris than just the polls – that his "art form" is simply "mimicry" and the Democratic Party candidate has no response to these sorts of attacks.
“She hasn't quite worked out how to bring the conversation back onto the areas that really ought to matter to people like wages, jobs, healthcare, lowering the price of insulin, bringing inflation down after the Ukraine war, and the jobs that Biden has created on the infrastructure plans,” she says.
“Those all ought to be tripping off her tongue the whole time.”
Listen in full on The News Agents
