Right-Wing Outlet Wonders Why Harris Didn’t Tout McDonald’s Experience on Legal Resume
The McFlurry machine is always broken, and so are some of the brains looking for dirt on Kamala Harris.
On Thursday, the right-wing outlet The Free Beacon published an article suggesting Harris may be lying about a brief employment stint at a McDonald’s during college.
Harris has often spoken of her time working as a cashier, fry-maker, and ice cream server during the summer of 1983 in Alameda, California, while still a student at Howard University. The summer job has featured in campaign materials, and Bill Clinton even joked during the Democratic National Convention last week that Harris might “break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”
In 2019, Harris joined a picket line of McDonald’s workers in Las Vegas, Nevada, striking for a $15 minimum wage. She recalled that while she “did the french fries and the ice cream” at the Golden Arches, at the time “there was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table, and keep the bills paid by the end of the month.”
Earlier this year, Harris spoke about working at McDonald’s on The Drew Barrymore Show. “I did fries, and then I did the cashier,” she said.
But for some on the right, Harris has not provided enough documentation to definitively prove that she spent a summer slinging fries and soft-serve in California. The publication took issue with the fact that Harris had not mentioned her time at McDonald’s in her 2010 or 2019 memoirs.
The Free Beacon also cited a copy of a 1987 job application Harris submitted to the Alameda County district attorney’s office for a position as a law clerk.
On the application, Harris lists her educational background, her references, as well as her past work experience at various legal firms and the Federal Trade Commission. McDonald’s is nowhere to be found, which the Free Beacon finds suspicious. After all, how will the district attorney of Alameda County know if she’s good at frying potatoes? Does she know how to load a soft-serve machine? How can she expect to clerk without this skillset?
The non-troversy reflects a string of desperate attacks against Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — whom the Free Beacon fragged for claiming two decades ago that he had received the “Outstanding Young Nebraskan” award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, when it was actually an award from the state’s Junior Chamber of Commerce. Seriously.
From accusations of being a communist, to misogynistic memes Trump promoted on social media, to racist attacks disputing her heritage and ethnicity, Harris is being put through the wringer — and handling it with considerable grace. Because if there’s anything to be learned from working at a fast food chain, it’s how to deal with entitled blowhards who think angry shouting will get them their way.
When asked by CNN on Thursday to respond to Trump’s claims that she had recently “happened to turn Black,” Harris shrugged off the dig.
“Same old, tired playbook,” she said. “Next question, please.”
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