Trump Dons Apron, Works Drive-thru, Fry Station at Bucks County, PA McDonald’s, Warming Hearts and Exploding Heads

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Here is what Trump said he would do:

“For a long time, [Harris has] been talking about her experience at McDonald’s. ‘I worked at McDonald’s, over the french fries, it was so hot,’” he said.

“I think I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s next week some place, it might not be here in your place—, I wanna see how it is.”

And that is exactly what Trump did, as we shall see. To set the political context, the McDonald’s was located in Feasterville, PA, in Bucks County, one of the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia (“Philly”). From the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Bucks County, the last purple part of Philly’s suburbs, could swing the race for Trump or Harris — and they know it“:

Bucks County is known for vote splitting and politically moderate voters.

Trump lost the county in 2016 and 2020 but by narrower margins than the rest of the Philly region. Over the summer, Republicans gained the advantage in voter registration. But Democrats have had success in recent local elections….

The margins in Bucks County could play a key role in determining who wins Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and the White House in November.

So, no pressure! In this post, I will first do a very aggregation of mainstream coverage, and then move almost entirely to tweets, not because Twitter is closer to “the people,” whoever they are, but because the hot takes there, however motivated, are generally fresher and sharper (I collected about 70 tweets, which was far too many, but I’ve curated that count down significantly). After giving the mainstream coverage the attention it deserves, I will frame the event by presenting two McDonald’s documents, and discussing the logistics of this campaign event. Then I will discuss whether the event was staged, fake or a stunt, and compare the reactions of Liberal Democrats and the McDonald’s workers. Finally, I will look at Trump’s ethos, and conclude.

Mainstream Coverage

From AP, “Trump works the fry station and holds a drive-thru news conference at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s”

FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump manned the fry station at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday before staging an impromptu news conference, answering questions through the drive-thru window.

As reporters and aides watched, an employee showed Trump how to dunk baskets of fries in oil, salt the fries and put them into boxes using a scoop. Trump, a well-known fan of fast food and a notorious germophobe, expressed amazement that he didn’t have to touch the fries with his hands.

“,” Trump said with a grin, putting away his suit jacket and wearing an apron over his shirt and tie.

From CBS, “Trump works drive-thru at Pennsylvania McDonald’s before town hall in Lancaster“:

Trump stopped at the McDonald’s in Feasterville, Bucks County, on Sunday, where he donned an apron and worked the drive-thru. The former president handed out food to pre-selected supporters in five cars.

From the Daily Mail, “Trump serves McDonald’s customers and says ‘I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala’”

Trump then proceeded to dip wire baskets of potatoes in sizzling oil before salting them and handing them out to customers through the restaurant’s drive-through window. Thousands of people lined the street opposite the restaurant to watch.

Video captured from within the kitchen on Sunday showed Trump, 78, passing out orders to a group of grateful prearranged ‘customers’ – Trump supporters understood to have been pre-selected by his camp – who were were to see the ex-president serving their food and told him why they’ll be supporting him in the election next month.

One man, apparently accompanied by his wife, told Trump, 78, ‘you are the type of person we want to be the president’, after thanking him for ‘everything you’re doing.’ His passenger added: ‘Thank you for taking the bullet for us.’

Before looking further into the event, let’s establish the corporate and franchise context.

McDonald’s Documents

Here is a document from McDonald’s corporate:

Corporate is saying, in the nicest possible way (“don’t have records for all positions dating back to the ’80s”) that they have no record of Kamala ever having worked there. (The press, in other words, has it exactly backwards: They say that Trump claims “without evidence” that Kamala didn’t work at McDonald’s. But Kamala made the claim, so it’s up to her to provide the evidence. So far, we have to take her claim on faith.)

Here is a document from the franchisee, taped to the door of the restaurant:

So, yes, the store was closed. To consider whether the event was staged, or fake, let’s consider campaign logisitics.

Logistics of the Campaign Event

We’re looking at a campaign event here. A crowd shot:

And another:

That’s a lot of people! Any one of whom might be the next Crooks or Rouf. As Zaid Jilani puts it, politely:

As I put it, less politely, ranting: It was a campaign event! Are we little children of six? Of course it was staged. All campaign events are staged. The essential point is not — as neoliberals would have it — the fact of a transaction, but the reality that Trump did the work (“dip[ped] wire baskets of potatoes in sizzling oil before salting them and handing them out”) End rant.

Staged, Fake, or a Stunt

Hence, liberal Democrat-aligned headlines like Trump serves McDonald’s fries to supporters in stage-managed campaign stop (WaPo), The difference between work and Trump’s staged McDonald’s theatrics (MSNBC), or These 25 BRUTAL reactions to Trump fake working at a CLOSED McDonald’s have us HOWLING (Pride) miss the point entirely: First, all campaign events are staged; and it’s especially important to stage campaign events properly, so Trump doesn’t get successfully assassinatedl, ‘third time is the charm”-style.

The Feasterville McDonald’s campaign event is best characterized as a stunt, which mainstream conservativers recognize, amazingly enough. Piers Morgan:

J-Pod:

Political stunts go back at least as far as Athens in the Fifth Century BC, and even liberal goodthinker Charlie Pierce understands that’s what was going on:

Semi-seriously, I’m not sure why everybody is making a big deal about this McDonald’s stunt. It was fake? Color me not astonished. It’s an example of what a veteran pol once told me about campaigning: Sooner or later, no matter how smart you are, or how brilliant your strategy is, you have to pet the pig. This was petting the pig, not dissimilar to flipping pancakes in New Hampshire or wolfing down corn dogs at the Iowa State Fair.

Checking my trusty OED, the essential characteristic of a stunt is that it involves an element of risk:

1. An act notable or impressive on account of the skill, strength, daring, etc., required to perform it, an exciting or dangerous feat or trick, an exploit; a theatrical turn; a daring aerobatic manoeuvre; a prescribed item or event in an athletic competition or display. Also, something intended to gain an effect or win an advantage; spec.

Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt — he actually landed a plane on the carrier Abraham Lincoln — is an example of a stunt gone terribly wrong…

.;.. since as it turned out, the Iraq mission wasn’t accomplished at all.

By contrast, Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show was a brilliant success, and solidified his popularity with young and “urban” voters:

I can imagine Susie Wiles stroking out when Trump proposed this to her: Her candidate heating up a deep fat fryer. What could go wrong, except everything? But that’s what a stunt is all about: Some risk. The pig turns away from the kiss, the pancake sticks to the ceiling, the candidate chokes on a bone at the fish fry. The fryolator erupts in a burst of hot oil, sending the candidate a stay in the hospital in the final two weelks of a campaign. Risk is the nature of stunts!

Reactions

First, I’ll look at some reactions that can, I think, be classified as pecksniffery, and self-defeating at that:

And:

And:

I like Sean Fain, but no, Kamala hasn’t “worn the uniform,” at least on the evidence we have.

The reactions of the workers in the store are quite different:

And:

In these, and in all the other images I have seen, the McDonald’s workers are reacting like this is a fun, silly, goofy event — as indeed it is!

Trump’s Ethos

I wrote:

Trump doesn’t even have to be good. All he has to do is actually feel the heat of the grill and show respect for workers by entering their world (and not with performative empathy and bullet points on the Twitter).

Well, they didn’t put Trump on the grill; just the fryer (hard to learn the grill in half an hour I suppose). But “show respect for workers by entering their world”? I think Trump did that:

(Trump wearing his tie under his apron is very different from Walz’s sad cosplay of a hunting outfit.)

The event is, of course, already generating countless memes:

Although this one may be a little over the top:

(I say it is a stunt, but since a stunt involves real risk, the gesture is meaningful in a way that merely staged or fake events are not. Imagine if Bill Clinton had butchered his saxphone solo!)

As a connoisseur of campaign technique, I applaud the event:

And I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with a Red State/Daily Caller account:

But when you’re right, you’re right.

Conclusion

At this point, I should remind readers that I have said, many times, that his election is a Sophie’s Choice. I don’t love either candidate, and I certainly don’t love Trump. After all:

Not only that but the franchisee in Feasterville has been screwing his workers:

But it doesn’t matter what Bernie thinks, because the Democrat Party neutered him (and empowered the franchisee, too, if it comes to that).

However, purely from the standpoint of technique, this campaign event is brilliant worthy of study. First, consider what is called “earned media”:

Correct, leaving aside the editorializing about Kamala.

Second, everything about the messaging is good. Not only did Trump “work the french fry job,” he put himself in the workers’ hands: They tied his apron, for example (the woman smiling at what she was doing, in on the joke). Any one of these human interactions could have gone very wrong (again, a stunt means risk).

Third, everything about the media is good. There’s a ton of video and photographs out there already, TikToking away, having a corrosive effect on liberal Democrat pecksniffery.

Fourth, the event should convincingly dispose of a talking point that the Democrats have been hammering hard on: That Trump, just like Biden, has cognitive issues, and they’re worsening. Clearly, he does not (imagine Biden trying the work the fryer).

Fifth, the event precludes Kamala from doing anything similar, since people will just think she’s copying Trump. To put this another way, Kamala can walk down the aisle in a church, but she can’t, say, take a shift at a Planned Parenthood office. Trump just sewed up campaign events at the workplace.

Sixth, will the event win Trump a few thousand votes in Bucks County? I think it will. Will that win him Pennsylvania? Hard to say, but it won’t hurt him.

Seventh, will the event win Trump the irregular voters his campaign seeks? I would speculate yes. For that part of the working class that’s had a lot of jobs, so many that they can’t really think about voting, I would bet McDonald’s would have been one of them. Whether or not Trump does empathize, some of them might well think he does, and in a way Kamala clearly does not. If they have the day off, they might vote.

Not a bad outcome for a half-an-hour’s work. We should all be so lucky!