McDonald McTrump’s Magnificent French Fry Stunt

Counter-Currents

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As we head into the home stretch of the most recent Most Important Election of Our Lifetime, I find it impossible to avoid electoral chitchat no matter how hard I try. Perhaps it’s solipsism, or maybe it’s the sober realization that more important issues currently tug at my attention than who gets elected president on November 5, but lately I’ve been hyper-focused on finalizing all the details for a cross-country move.

A week ago, I hired a trio of helpers from a local moving company to assist me in packing a 26-foot truck for my drive from Georgia to New Mexico. All three of them were black because not only was this Georgia, but they were the only ones available in my area.

Without any prodding from me and my politics-avoidant temperament, the most amiable and helpful of the three mentioned that he planned to vote for Donald Trump because Trump would bring jobs back for menial laborers such as himself. He said couldn’t trust any woman to be stable enough to make life-or-death decisions in a world perched on the brink of chaos. Things got even odder when he began blasting music from Morgan Wallen, a mullet-headed white country singer who barely escaped career death a few years back when he drunkenly referred to another white guy as a “nigga.”

Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link/target as.”

https://counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/audio-articles/TRUMPFRIES.m4a

In the suburban wilds due south of Atlanta, I’d encountered that rarest of breeds—a MAGAnigga.

Teeth clenched and bladder a-burstin’, I commandeered that preposterously large truck for three days along the 1,500-mile westbound route as Mrs. Goad followed closely behind in her car. I listened mostly to AM talk radio, a staticky mishmash of Buck Sextons and Sean Hannitys, all of them agitating for Trump.

Stranded out in the heartland far from the nation’s media centers, we’d stop for breakfast at greasy spoons in Palestine, AR and Weatherford, OK. These charming little places were staffed and patronized by Middle American MAGAmaniacs, at least half of whom were wearing camouflage and all of whom were white. Such rural spots serve as preservation zones for a vanishing sort of Americana that seems increasingly threatened the more coastal and plugged-in one ventures.

Bleary and road-weary, we arrived in northern New Mexico on Saturday morning, three days after leaving Georgia.

On Sunday afternoon, with my energies still devoted to unpacking and getting oriented, Donald Trump did something that reminded me why I love the guy and hope he gets elected—if only for spite.

He staged a publicity stunt where he donned an apron at a McDonald’s in Feasterville, PA, cooked some French fries, and served them up steamin’-hot to an adoring series of drive-thru patrons. Here’s video of the event as it happened.

Trump claimed it was a reaction to the following comments Kamala Harris had made in September about working as a McDonald’s fry chef while on summer break from college in 1983:

Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family…. I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility then is to meet those needs.

Trump said Harris was lying and that she’d never worked at McDonald’s. On Monday, the food giant released a noncommittal statement:

McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President. We are not red or blue – we are golden.

Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches. While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes “1 in 8″ so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had.

The “1 in 8” slogan refers to McDonald’s claim that one in every eight Americans has toiled for them at some point in their lives.

For all I can tell, Harris may have worked for McDonald’s. But I don’t think it matters. And I doubt that Donald Trump has any idea what it’s like to have to scrape by on fast-food wages merely to feed himself. But the hilariously crass specter of him in an apron, cooking fries just to be a dick to Kamala Harris, is why he resonates with working-class people. Seeing him make small talk with the McDonald’s workers, and then schmooze with and compliment the series of drive-thru patrons as he hands them their bags of fries, reveals him to be intensely more likable than Harris could ever hope to be.

Behold Harris at a deli in Philly this week, straining her ovaries to seem authentic and relatable, yet coming off desperately out of touch.

Witness the shrill, humorless hyperbole of her supporters as they dredge up previous health-inspection violations from the McDonald’s where Trump staged his French-fry stunt. Watch as they tsk-tsk the fact that he’s not wearing a hairnet or his “approved uniform shirt.” Marvel as commenters on X attempt to link Trump’s 15-minute fry shift with a subsequent deadly e. coli outbreak at McDonald’s outlets in other states.

Compare all that academic nastiness and bitter nitpicking with Trump’s entire performance as he wows and dazzles and compliments and cheerleads and butters up that Pennsylvania crowd.

The whole comical event spoke directly to my soul, as back in 1979 for a few months between high school and college, I manned the French-fry station at a Wendy’s in Media, PA, only 25 miles from Feasterville.

The minimum wage back then was $2.90 an hour. I would hitchhike to and from work each day. Hovering over those boiling fry cages was like taking an oily steam bath. I endured more than a few burns on my hands and forearms. Besides being a cabdriver in Philadelphia a few years later, it was the most working-class job I’d ever had.

Only a fool would say that Donald Trump came from the working class, but only a drooling imbecile would deny that he speaks their language and makes them feel heard far better than a thousand howling Bernie Sanders clones could ever hope to do.

The proof is in the French fries.