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I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 11 minutes.
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Quick hits.
- The House Task Force investigating the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump released its interim findings, calling the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 a preventable incident caused by a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and local law enforcement partners. (The report)
- The trial of Daniel Penny, who is charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for putting a homeless man in a chokehold in a New York City subway car in 2023, began on Monday in Manhattan. (The trial)
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to push for a ceasefire deal for the last time before the election. (The meeting) Separately, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine and announced the U.S. would be sending an additional $400 million in military aid to the country. (The meeting)
- The Biden administration paused student loan repayments for roughly eight million borrowers enrolled in the administration’s SAVE plan for an additional six months. (The extension) Separately, President Biden proposed a rule that would mandate that health plans cover over-the-counter birth control. (The proposal)
- Moldovans narrowly voted in favor of a referendum to join the European Union after applying to join the Union in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (The vote)
Today's topic.
Trump's McDonald's visit. On Sunday, former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump manned the fry station and handed out drive-through orders at a McDonald's in Feasterville-Trevose, a Philadelphia suburb in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. Afterward, he held an informal press conference with reporters.
Trump's visit to the McDonald's comes after weeks of claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris, despite what she has said while campaigning, did not work at McDonald's while in college. Trump has not backed his claim with evidence, though Harris’s claim has only been verified by a friend who recalled her working there in the early 1980s. On Sunday, McDonald’s sent a memo to franchisees noting that it did not have employment records for all employees dating back to the 1980s.
During the roughly 30-minute event, an employee showed Trump how to dunk fries in oil and box them up. While handing out orders to customers, Trump addressed reporters, saying he would respect the results of the vote next month "if it's a fair election." Asked if he would support minimum wage increases for McDonald's workers after seeing them in action, Trump deflected, saying, "These people work hard. They're great."
Trump's visit became an immediate source of controversy. Many liberal pundits criticized the visit as a photo-op, while a Harris campaign spokesperson said the visit “showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain.”
Conversely, Trump's supporters said it was a perfect example of the former president’s ability to connect with working-class voters. Shortly after the visit, McDonald's shared a statement with franchisees saying the company is "not a political brand" and is "not endorsing" candidates.
Meanwhile, the owner of the Feasterville-Trevose McDonald's defended the decision to host Trump. “It is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community,” Derek Giacomantonio said in a statement. “That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s.”
Today, we're going to take a look at some commentary from the left and right about the visit, then my take.
What the left is saying.
- The left views the visit as a stunt, though some note that both campaigns are using McDonald’s to appeal to voters.
- Many criticize Trump’s comments about the minimum wage during the event.
- Others say the entire event was built around promoting a lie about Harris’s work history.
In The New York Times, Marcia Chatelain wrote about “the enduring symbolism of McDonald’s.”
“In presidential politics, you have to meet potential voters where they are. So every four years, churches, college campuses and even barbershops become the mainstays of the presidential campaign circuit. But, this year, the contenders have added the McDonald’s fry station,” Chatelain said. “The public’s image of the typical McDonald’s employee has overlapped with the elusive voter both parties are hoping to secure in the last days of the race. The Trump and Harris campaigns have relied on the American dream of industry and unbridled capitalism to tell a story about social mobility and who can deliver it to more Americans. The story of who owns and who works at McDonald’s is part of that story.”
“By the early 1980s, when Ms. Harris was donning her McDonald’s uniform, the restaurant was a beacon of hope for minority entrepreneurship, but also a symbol of economic marginalization of workers of all colors,” Chatelain wrote. “Although there are many things that Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris disagree on, their view of the role of McDonald’s in economic mobility is something they share. Both candidates appear to be running on the idea that Black voters are enamored of promises of the free market more so than guarantees for fair wages and labor protections.”
In Salon, Ashlie D. Stevens said Trump’s McDonald’s “stunt highlights his disregard for minimum-wage workers.”
“While the scene might seem like typical campaign theater, it highlights a larger irony in Trump’s relationship with fast food — and more specifically, with the minimum-wage workers who typically make it. For years, Trump has cultivated a populist image, frequently extolling his love of McDonald’s, Burger King and other chains,” Stevens wrote. “However, while Trump is known for his love of fast food, this latest stunt highlights a stark irony: the same man who celebrates McDonald’s burgers seems to belittle the workers who serve them, as evidenced by both his past policies and current attitudes. And Trump’s latest attempt to turn Harris’s work history into a punchline simply underscores his broader pattern of thoughtlessly dismissing the value of minimum-wage jobs.
“For instance, while standing in the McDonald’s drive-thru, Trump was asked multiple times if he supported raising the federal minimum wage. During his first presidential campaign, Trump seemingly toyed with the idea of supporting a $10 minimum wage instead of the current rate of $7.25 per hour, but ultimately said he’d ‘rather leave it to the states — let the states decide,’” Stevens said. “Ultimately, Trump’s McDonald’s stunt serves as a reminder of the contradictions at the heart of his populist appeal. He may love fast food, but his rhetoric and policies often undermine the people who make it.”
In USA Today, Rex Huppke suggested the event promoted “a really dumb and dishonest point.”
“On Sunday, the Trump campaign took over a McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, thanks to a franchisee, Derek Giacomantonio, who agreed to close the restaurant to the public for the day. That allowed Trump’s handlers to stage-manage a fake ‘shift,’ with Trump making some fries and working the drive-thru window,” Huppke wrote. “Trump wearing a McDonald’s apron drew comparisons to Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’ disastrous 1988 photo-op in an M1 Abrams tank. Both moments featured candidates looking dumb and wholly out of place.”
“What made the elaborate stunt particularly ridiculous was the reason behind it. Trump wasn’t trying to appeal to voters who work in the fast-food or service industries. He was trying to make an inconsequential and unfounded point,” Huppke said. “He has literally nothing to back up the accusation, and also: Who cares? It’s a tiny part of Harris’ background and work experience. But because Trump is the smallest person on the planet, he has to make a big to-do about it because he thinks it’s a sick burn.”
What the right is saying.
- The right says the visit showed Trump in a favorable light and reinforced the negative impacts of the Biden administration’s policies on the working class.
- Some call the event a tactical success for the Trump campaign.
- Others criticize the media’s and Democrats’ reaction to the visit.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about “Trump, Harris and McDonald’s.”
“It was a nice photo-op. But the fast-food aficionado missed a bigger opportunity to highlight how Kamala Harris’s agenda endangers such jobs and franchise restaurants,” the board said. “Fast-food jobs provide young people lessons in treating customers courteously, showing up on time, and taking and following orders, which can serve them well throughout their careers. So why does the Vice President want to make it harder to work there?”
“Like other restaurant chains, McDonald’s has had to cope with a tight labor market and inflationary costs. This has contributed to higher prices. The average cost of a Big Mac meal nationwide has increased to $9.29 from $7.29 in 2019. A Hamburger Happy Meal has risen to $4.69 from $3.00,” the board wrote. “Progressives accuse McDonald’s of ‘price gouging,’ but its prices have increased in line with its cost of goods and labor. Yet Ms. Harris wants to give the Federal Trade Commission authority to punish alleged price gouging by the food industry—that is, fix prices. FTC Chair Lina Khan’s agency would determine if McDonald’s franchisees are charging too much for a happy meal.”
In Fox News, David Marcus said “Trump's McDonald’s visit served up four brilliant political moments.”
“In one event, Trump’s savvy campaign team slew four political dragons, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris’ central argument strewn across the floor like a spilled McFlurry,” Marcus wrote. “First, Trump’s playful manner with employees and supporters alike, clearly humanizes a man that Democrats need to convince voters is some kind of combination of Stalin, Hitler, and the Hamburglar. Second, Trump’s campaign completely dominated the news cycle all day at a stage in the campaign when winning each day is the central and most important goal.
“Third, Trump had the opportunity to further mock Harris over her alleged stolen McDonald's valor. After all, this is a woman who wanted to inspect Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, but can’t recall where the Micky D’s she worked at was. Finally, and most importantly, the spectacle made it completely obvious that Trump is neither exhausted, nor senile, a lie that the entire liberal media sang in chorus all weekend,” Marcus said. “Whether it is putting on an apron at McDonald's, or chopping it up at a barbershop in the Bronx, Donald Trump is just a gifted retail politician.”
In Hot Air, David Strom called the visit “McMentum.”
“There is something glorious about how Donald Trump keeps breaking the minds of the elite. It is his most charming characteristic and probably one of the key reasons why there is a preference cascade that may carry him to victory in just over two weeks,” Strom wrote. “You can see their heads explode as Trump served french fries to the proles. It was so gauche, and popped Kamala's bubble by exposing her phony claim that she worked at McDonalds. Nobody cared whether she actually worked there; they cared that she so casually lied about it in a vain attempt to seem relatable. She puts on ‘McDonalds employee’ the same way she adopts a phony accent: with contempt for her audience.”
“Trump doesn't cosplay being a prole. He is who he is. He is a billionaire and proud of it, and is also pure Americana. He is not all about transnational high culture; he loves fries like the rest of us,” Strom said. “Trump's McDonalds stunt will not win him the election, because no one event will win him the election. But it is symbolic of what makes Trump a force in American politics. He is who he is, and even if he is not LIKE us, he understands us in a way that nobody on the left ever could.”
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
- Events like this one are obviously staged, but we can still glean some insights from them about the state of the race.
- Trump wants to make this story about Harris’s employment record at McDonald’s, and the record is very much not clear.
- I think the entire episode highlights the differences in how Trump and Harris are trying to reach these voters.
Obviously, this McDonald’s visit was staged; but I want to start by describing just how staged it was.
Feasterville was well briefed about Trump’s visit. I saw a friend from home post about it on Instagram before it happened. Thousands of people lined the streets before he arrived. Drivers rehearsed their drive-throughs. The customers were vetted by the Secret Service before going anywhere near the window. And so on. We didn't witness an impromptu shift at McDonald's, and Trump wasn't really putting himself out there randomly with the public (which is understandable, given he’s a former president who’s also been the target of two assassination attempts since July).
This isn't to say Trump didn’t serve up authentic or genuinely endearing moments. He's a known germaphobe, and seemed to delight in the fact he didn't have to touch any of the fries to make an order. His ability to casually chum it up with the other workers inside the McDonald's, and some of the customers, is exactly the kind of retail politics that he's always been much better at than most other politicians. He can make people laugh and looked comfortable chatting with the employees. Moments like this are a core part of Trump's appeal, and he executed the visit to near perfection.
My point is just that, in the final days of the presidential campaigns, you should remember that visits like these are all theater.
Trump obviously wanted to use this visit to draw attention to Harris's purported record of working at McDonald's. "I've now worked [at McDonald's] for 15 minutes more than Kamala," Trump said from the drive-thru window shortly after arriving.
Candidly, I can't say for certain whether Harris did or not. There is plenty of reason to doubt her: Harris only mentioned working at McDonald’s for the first time publicly five years ago, in the middle of running for president in 2019. She never mentioned it in two autobiographical books, and it has only been verified by one friend, who said she heard it from Harris's mom. The lack of hard evidence bolsters the point. Five years after college, she applied for a law clerk job and was asked to list every job she'd held in the last 10 years — she left out her time with McDonald’s. The company itself says it had no record of her working there, but also says it does not have complete work records going back to the 1980s, when she purported to work there. None of that looks great for Harris.
At the same time, I could tell you (honestly) that I worked as a busboy at several restaurants, as a janitor at a veterinarian's office, and as a landscaper throughout college; but I would not have listed those on applications for full-time journalism work, and if you wanted me to prove to you I had all those jobs, I think it would be pretty difficult to produce records or photographic evidence. So it’s totally plausible Harris had this job and only introduced it as part of her political biography recently in an obvious attempt to build some working-class connection with voters as a national candidate. Trump is capitalizing on the ambiguity, and it might be smart; even though wrongly disputing a political rival’s background is something Trump has done before (see: Obama’s birth certificate), fudging working-class bona fides seems like the kind of thing a politician like Harris would do, too.
Setting aside his motivations, I think the visit was unambiguously smart politics from Trump. It's Bucks County, and you all know how I feel about that. The margins of my home county could decide Pennsylvania, which could decide the election. Visiting places like Bucks is not particularly novel, but working the shift, throwing on the apron, dishing out a few orders — it worked.
The visit and the Harris campaign response also says a lot about how both Trump and Harris are trying to appeal to working-class voters. Trump wants to turn out a specific kind of working-class voter who doesn't just eat at places like McDonald's, but works there. His brand of politics is to make these voters feel something — to make them feel seen. These visits communicate the message "I know you are there," that Trump recognizes their day-to-day lives. That feeling he gives “normal” Americans is still the central advantage of how he campaigns.
Harris (and Democrats writ large) tend to approach these voters differently. In this case, her team responded to Trump's visit by just claiming that he's never worked a real job and was handed his wealth on a silver platter — they responded by deriding Trump. In other contexts, Democrats want to convince voters that they can change their day to day livelihoods. The common refrain from Harris or Democrats during this election has been "I will do X for you” — in this case, it's to raise the minimum wage, which Harris has described as "poverty" pay.
So: Trump tries to make these voters feel seen (without promising anything), and Harris tries to make them feel hope for a different kind of future.
I'm not passing judgment on either approach; each strategy has worked in past campaigns, and they have worked differently for different voters. Now, if Trump had used this visit to announce that he supported raising the minimum wage, I think he could have made days of headlines and political hay. But he didn't. So voters have to decide how they feel about Trump’s gesture, and they’ll likely land in different places.
In the end, it was smart stuff from Trump, and it allowed him to show some “normal” vibes amidst a slew of headlines comparing him to Hitler or claiming he’s lost his marbles. Given where we are in the campaign, that’s a timely win for him.
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Under the radar.
With two weeks until Election Day, two critical Senate races are shifting away from incumbents. On Monday, Cook Political Report revised its rating for the Pennsylvania Senate race between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick from “lean Democrat” to “toss up” after internal polling showed the contest within the margin of error. Additionally, Cook Political shifted the Nebraska Senate race between incumbent Sen. Deb Fischer (R) and Dan Osborn (I) from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” Polling in both races has tightened over the past month, with Casey currently leading McCormick by 4.1 points in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average and Fischer leading by just 1.1 points. The late shift means Democrats are now defending four seats rated by Cook Political as toss ups, while Republicans now have two rated “lean Republican” (but no toss ups). Cook Political Report has the story.
Numbers.
- 1 in 8. The number of Americans who have worked at McDonald’s at some point, according to the restaurant chain.
- 90%. The approximate percentage of Americans who consume McDonald’s in a given year.
- 21%. The percent increase in the average price of a Big Mac in the U.S. between 2019 and 2024.
- 68%. The percentage of Democrats who say they would be less likely to purchase from a company that endorses a candidate from the opposing party, according to an August 2024 Gallup survey.
- 61%. The percentage of Republicans who say they would be less likely to purchase from a company that endorses a candidate from the opposing party.
- 38%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think businesses should take a public stance on current events.
- 17%. The percentage of U.S. adults who think businesses should take a public stance on political candidates.
The extras.
- One year ago today we had just published a Friday edition of a discussion about DEI with Chloé Valdary.
- The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was our Friday edition with Isaac’s election predictions.
- Nothing to do with politics: A New Zealand airport put a timecap on curbside hugs.
- Yesterday’s survey: 986 readers responded to our survey asking about Yahya Sinwar’s death with 54% saying it will have no effect on the peace process. “I want to be optimistic, but of course I have many doubts,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
For 20,000 Americans living with a severe form of sickle cell disease, there has been little hope for a treatment option. But last December, the FDA approved a new gene therapy. The treatment itself is still arduous and difficult to obtain, but the end result leaves individuals able to enjoy movement in a way they couldn’t before. “I haven’t felt all the amazingness yet,” said 12-year-old Kendric Cromer after completing his treatment. “But I am slowly starting to feel better.” The New York Times has the story.
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