My column for the San Francisco Chronicle on McDonald's and Trump...
I'm fried just from watching this moron!
Trump’s 15-minute stunt at McDonald’s: ‘Want lies with that?’
By Jack Ohman
October 25, 2024
One in 8 Americans has worked at a McDonald’s at some point in their life, including, for real, Vice President Kamala Harris, when she was a young person.
What was Donald Trump doing at around that age? The little darling was collecting rent for his slumlord, slimebag father and making sure Black people couldn’t rent their hovels.
Trump has somehow convinced himself that Harris didn’t really work at McDonald’s, so he decided to work there for 15 minutes. That’s probably about how long it takes to make a French fry, start to finish.
“Work there” is a term of art, but Trump “made fries” for a bit in a closed McDonald’s store in Feasterville-Trevose, Pa., where only preselected Trump acolytes were able to “order.”
Is this a closing argument? An October surprise?
No. We here in American journalism call this a stunt.
Doing the “Hey, I’m a regular working person” bit is common for politicians. The late Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., did this routinely in his reelection campaigns, but he actually worked for an entire day on many difficult worksites.
Trump? Naw. Why should he start working now? The only thing he’s worked on with any diligence is his short game and blow-drying his hair while holding bobby pins in his teeth.
The sight of this primary consumer of McDonaldland chow was, if nothing else, hilarious. One wonders if he snuck a handful of salty golden goodness while he toiled over a fryer.
Trump observed without a trace of irony that he had always wanted to work at Mickey D’s, which is perhaps the biggest lie he’s ever told. This assertion is particularly demeaning to the millions of past and current McDonald’s workers who have had to work there and those who work at other fast food establishments.
I’m not exactly sure what Trump was trying to prove with his 15 minutes of fries? That he’s a common person? He’s not only not common, he’s a pampered narcissistic punk who had everything handed to him, including his fries.
That Trump is showcasing the plight of the fast food worker? I’m sorry, this drive-thru mic is garbled. Say again?
Of course, the national news media fell for it, again. Camera-friendly, you know. Meanwhile, Trump is a closeted (barely) authoritarian, and the TV nets can’t help but shoot this McKabuki theater.
I have lots of people in my life who have worked at either McDonald’s, Burgerville (that’s in Oregon), Wendy’s, and even I worked as a dishwasher at a family restaurant called Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor.
Let me tell you what was going through my 16-year- old mind as I did that kind of work, if you haven’t had the pleasure.
I made $1.75 per hour, which was pathetic even in 1977. I had to buy special black waterproof shoes, which had oil and grease resistant soles. My main vocational goal back then was getting a job where my feet stayed dry.
While operating the steaming Hobart dishwasher, I regularly burned my hand and fingers on the exposed heating element at the bottom of the machine. Dishwashers will remember this vividly, unless they’ve improved the design.
I smelled like fried food all the time, even after showering, and the ketchup stung in my wounded, burned fingers when I cleared the bus tubs, where I also routinely cut my hands on broken water glasses.
Oh, and I was sticky all the time, too. If I worked really hard, I was told I could then become a busboy. After that, a waiter.
In contrast, Trump gets to pretend to be a real, live fast-food working person and then skate after the cameras turn off.
The late author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote several books about this kind of work — her most famous was her 2001 book, “Nickel and Dimed” and she talked about how hard it was to live at all on the salaries places such as McDonald’s paid.
Ehrenreich wrote that “When someone works for less pay than she can live on … she has made a great sacrifice for you … The ‘working poor’ … are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone.”
The only work Trump has done is to attempt to destroy American democracy, his true life’s passion project.
I am sure that Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School of Finance, didn’t encourage this kind of labor, preferring to instruct their students to own fast food joints, not work in them.
What did Donald Trump do after his micro-shift concluded? Did he stand outside before the cameras and decry the treatment that fast food workers routinely suffer for slave wages?
No, he did not. He probably wanted to see if Haitians were coming in with pets to dip into the fryer — Happy Meals for liars.
Interestingly, right after Trump’s silly grease-fried showboating, it turns out that McDonald’s had an E. coli outbreak in their quarter pounders.
Wonder if they made Trump wash his hands before his fry-op? We know he didn’t wear gloves.
After this, we all need a good sanitizing handwashing.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman
***********************
Hey folks! I’ll be writing a column on the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post endorsement embarrassment later today. Please consider a paid subscription, as this is my main hustle: writing specifically for my buds here on Substack. Thanks for your support, free or paid!—J P.S…. Yes, I will take a little time this weekend to have some fun: public golf with The People.