Trump Supporters Are Praising Him For Doing Something Many Politicians Do

Former President Donald Trump’s supporters were all over social media on Sunday, hailing his shift working at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s as a heartfelt and, apparently, unprecedented show of solidarity with working-class Americans.
But there’s nothing novel or unique about a politician taking a turn trying out an everyday job.
In fact, among those who have done it before is Vice President Kamala Harris ― more than once and, quite arguably, in a way that bears directly on the choice voters face in November. Her stints trying out working-class jobs line up neatly with her record on policy, as well as some of her best-known, potentially farthest-reaching proposals in the 2024 presidential campaign.
To put it a bit more bluntly: You can make a solid case that the people whose jobs Harris was trying would benefit directly from her agenda, but you’d have a tougher time making that case for Trump.
Trump’s stint was at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, northeast of Philadelphia, and lasted about 30 minutes. The 2024 Republican presidential nominee manned the fryer for a while, then took a turn at the drive-thru, where he served customers that the Secret Service had prescreened.
The goal ― well, one goal, at least ― was to troll Harris, who has long talked about her experience working at McDonald’s while she was in college. (Trump and his supporters have made baseless claims Harris never worked there.) But it was the spectacle of the entertainment and real estate mogul at the iconic fast food franchise, doing the familiar fast food work, that had his supporters enraptured and posting on X (formerly Twitter).
“One of the greatest moments in presidential campaign history,” wrote right-wing author and influencer Katie Pavlich. Commentator and 2020 Trump campaign official Tim Murtaugh said, “There has never been a better day of campaigning in Pennsylvania.”
“Look at Trump at McDonalds,” right-wing activist Jack Posobiec told his nearly 3 million followers. “That stuff can’t be taught or faked. Authenticity. That’s the real deal.”
“Trump working at McDonald’s making fries might be one of the most powerful campaign moves in history,” wrote Philip Buchanan, the right-wing online activist who goes by the handle “Cattturd” and has 3 million followers of his own.
But politicians have been taking their turns at “normal” jobs for a long time. Bob Graham, the legendary Democrat from Florida who died earlier this year, turned the practice into an art form, serving once-a-month “workadays” through his career as a state legislator, governor and then U.S. senator.
Sometimes the turns were pretty quick, like when Republican John McCain stirred gumbo at a Florida restaurant in his 2008 presidential campaign, or when 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry stopped at a Pennsylvania factory.
The practice is so hackneyed, especially on Labor Day, that Politico actually did a photo essay about it called “On the Clock With Candidates at Their Fake Jobs.”
But sometimes the exercise is about more than a photo op – which brings us to Harris, who is among the politicians who have participated in a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) program called “Walk a Day.”
The idea of “Walk a Day” is to pair politicians with SEIU housekeepers, nurses and other members in the hopes politicians will remember just how demanding those jobs can be when it’s time to make policy.
Harris has done the “Walk a Day” at least twice. In July 2019, her first presidential campaign, she trailed a security officer in Detroit named Delores McDaniel. The effort included a visit to McDaniel’s subsidized housing, and a ride on the bus, according to an SEIU press release and video.
“She comes in the afternoon and works late into the night,” Harris said afterward, according to the release. “She has a two-hour commute to get here. She also does not get sick leave. She does not get paid family leave.”
Almost a decade earlier, while Harris was district attorney in San Francisco, Harris visited Wendy Ko, who was a caregiver for her elderly mother in the Bay Area. Video of that day, which SEIU reposted just two weeks ago, shows Harris helping Ko to lift her mother out of bed and to make and serve dinner.
“I don’t know how to describe it in any way, other than to say ― in total admiration and awe of the work that this woman was doing ― it’s hard work, it’s physically tasking, emotionally heavy work,” Harris said at the time.
Harris would go on to win that election. In the Senate, she focused on caregiving with particular attention to the needs of caregivers ― probably never more vividly than we she proposed a “domestic workers bill of rights” to make sure people who work in homes get some of the same labor protections as those who work in an office or factory.
In 2010, when @VP was a District Attorney, she took the time to spend a day with Wendy Ko, a home care provider in the Bay Area. Her commitment to creating a better world for workers has always been inspiring, let’s get that energy to the White House.https://t.co/EykFupkhu4
She’s done the same as a presidential candidate, and just a few weeks ago rolled out a major (if wildly under-appreciated) proposal to have Medicare start covering some of the costs of long-term care at home. It would be an expensive proposition, full of difficult policy questions and tradeoffs that Harris has yet to address, but the reaction online made clear the enormous need it would address.
Nobody would suggest Harris made these proposals for caregivers because of the few hours she spent with Wendy Ko or Dolores McDaniel. If anything, she was likely inspired by her childhood memories of Regina Shelton, the local nursery school teacher Harris has called a “second mother,” and then her experience caring for her own mother, Shyamala Gopalan, while she was dying from cancer.
Harris has talked about that experience repeatedly, including at an economic policy speech in Pittsburgh last month.
“I remember being there for my mother when she was diagnosed with cancer,” Harris said. “Cooking meals for her, taking her to her appointments. Trying to make her comfortable, figuring out which clothes were soft enough that they wouldn’t irritate her. Telling her stories to try and make her laugh. I know caregiving is about dignity.”
It’s not clear whether any similar experiences shaped the views of Trump, who is the son of a real estate developer and was, as The New York Times once put it, “a millionaire by 8.” As for his record on policy, his signature legislative accomplishment as president was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, whose benefits flowed overwhelmingly to the wealthy.
That law is also his only major legislative accomplishment, but only because his first priority — trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act — failed to get through Congress. The repeal legislation Trump backed would have dramatically cut spending on Medicaid and insurance subsidies for the middle class and working poor, causing millions and maybe tens of millions of Americans to lose their health coverage.
The centerpiece of Trump’s 2024 agenda is an across-the-board tariff on imported goods that he has said could replace the income tax. The broad consensus among experts is that in practice it would serve as a new tax that would slow growth and raise prices, with working Americans taking a particularly hard hit.
In fact, an October analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that his economic plans “would, on average, lead to a tax cut for the richest 5% of Americans and a tax increase for all other income groups.”
Trump insists the experts are wrong, that his agenda is all about helping average Americans, not the wealthy — even though, back in April, he reportedly courted ultra-wealthy donors at a private fundraiser by telling them he’d make them richer. Pitches like that may have worked, given all the money Trump and the organizations promoting his reelection have been getting from conservative and libertarian moguls.
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During Sunday’s stint at McDonald’s, Trump answered questions in what The Associated Press called a “drive-thru press conference.” One of those was about whether Trump would support a higher minimum wage, which is something that would likely raise pay for fast food workers across the country.
Trump dodged the question, saying, “Well, I think this: These people work hard. They’re great. And I just saw something — a process that’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing.”