Donald Trump’s latest campaign event in North Carolina — a state the former president has focused considerable attention on lately — was ostensibly supposed to focus on manufacturing and job creation. But while the Republican did have a few things to say about his intended topic, he also strayed from his script to talk about one of his favorite subjects.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump declared, “never worked at McDonald’s. It was a fake story. It was a fake story; the press now refuses to write it because it’s so, you know, this is a simple one. She said she worked at McDonald’s and she didn’t. … It was a lie. She never worked at McDonald’s over the hot french fries.”
The GOP candidate quickly added that he plans to go to a McDonald’s “in two weeks” — it’s always “two weeks,” isn’t it? — and he intends to “work the french fries.” Trump concluded, “I will have worked longer and harder at McDonald’s than she did if I do that even for half an hour.”
If the rhetoric seemed at all familiar, it’s because Trump has been obsessed to an unhealthy degree with the vice president having worked at McDonald’s as a college student.
It’s not altogether clear why, exactly, the Republican is convinced that Harris lied about this — by all appearances, she really did work there — but whatever the trigger, his fixation on the story is increasingly creepy.
In fact, the day before his latest North Carolina event, Trump was in Georgia, where he focused attention on Harris and McDonald’s.
The day before that, Trump was in Pennsylvania, where he appeared enraged by the lack of interest in Harris and McDonald’s.
A few hours before the Pennsylvania event, Trump wrote on his social media platform, “Kamala should take down and disavow all of her Statements that she worked for McDonald’s” — despite the fact that she appears to have worked at McDonald’s.
Three days before that, Trump also whined online that Harris made her McDonald’s experience “a major part of her Campaign.” (The only one person making this a major part of the campaign is him.)
Two days earlier, Trump held a rally in North Carolina, where he complained that Oprah Winfrey interviewed Harris but didn’t ask about McDonald’s.
A week earlier, Trump held a press conference in California, where he also focused attention on Harris and McDonald’s. A few hours later, the Republican campaigned in Las Vegas, where he talked about it some more.
The same evening, Trump again turned to his online platform to insist that the Democratic nominee “NEVER WORKED AT McDONALD’S — A TOTAL LIE. LAMESTREAM MEDEA REFUSES TO REPORT THIS FACT.”
It’s not a fact, and news organizations have “refused” to go along with Trump’s obsession because there’s no evidence to bolster his hysterics.
Alas, we can keep going. The week before the Las Vegas event, Trump insisted that Harris “never worked at McDonalds.” He wrote the same thing two days earlier, after repeating the claim at Washington, D.C., event the day before.
In other words, with fewer than six weeks before Election Day, the Republican nominee appears to be focused at least as much on this issue than anything else.
That, of course, is utterly bonkers, in part because there’s literally no evidence that Harris lied, in part because Trump hasn’t even tried to substantiate his attack with anything other than repetition, and in part because his obsession isn’t likely to move the electoral needle.
The broader circumstances, meanwhile, continue to be noteworthy. The Democratic nominee has been involved in public service for decades, working as a prosecutor, a state attorney general, a U.S. senator, and a vice president. If the GOP candidate and his team are eager to scrutinize her record, there should be plenty of accurate things to choose from.
So why is it that Trump has relied so heavily on made-up nonsense? If Harris is as bad as her partisan critics claim, why can’t Trump simply tell the truth and shift his focus away from her college-era fast-food experience?
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
