Kamala Harris and McDonald’s: A College Job, and a Trump Attack

Donald Trump has claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris never worked at the fast-food chain. Her campaign and a friend say she did.

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Vice President Kamala Harris has said on the campaign trail that she worked at a McDonald’s in the Bay Area during the summer after her freshman year of college.

Birtherism, meet burgerism.

Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.

But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.

Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.

It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.

ImageFormer President Donald J. Trump is an avid eater of fast food. In 2019, as he hosted college football players at the White House, he fed them McDonald’s. Credit…Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

Mr. Trump, an avid eater of fast food who even catered a White House celebration from McDonald’s in 2019, is scheduled to visit a McDonald’s location in the Philadelphia area on Sunday. “I’m going to McDonald’s to work the French fries,” he said on Saturday in Latrobe, Pa. Asked why, an aide, Jason Miller, told reporters, “So that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald’s.”

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