Did Kamala Harris work at McDonald’s? All the evidence the VP did – or didn’t – serve fries and ice cream
Vice President Kamala Harris still cannot prove her claim that she worked at McDonald’s during her college years, despite repeated insults from former President Donald Trump.
“I have now worked at McDonald’s 15 minutes longer than Kamala,” Trump told reporters and customers after making fries and serving food from the drive-thru window on Sunday.
The Harris campaign claims that during the summer after her freshman year at Howard University in 1983, Harris worked at a McDonald’s location on Central Avenue in Alameda, California.
But the restaurant’s staff are reportedly sworn to secrecy and when DailyMail.com contacted them to ask, an employee said ‘no, sorry’.
Vice President Kamala Harris still cannot prove her claim that she worked at McDonald’s during her college years, despite repeated insults from former President Donald Trump.
The New York Times also quoted Wanda Kagan, a close high school friend of Harris who remains active in the campaign, who recalled Harris’ now-deceased mother, who once said Harris worked at a McDonalds.
Despite Trump’s continued tormenting of Harris on the issue, the vice president and her team have no new information to back up her claim.
Experts noted on social media that Harris was able to easily access her government tax records to prove her work at the site.
Social Security keeps records of tax forms for employees working in the United States, ‘from 1978 to present’ according to to the agency’s website.
McDonald’s revealed Sunday that it has no data to verify Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim, but praised her “fond memories” of working at the franchise location.
‘[W]e and our franchisees do not have data going back to the early 1980s for all positions,” the company noted in an internal memo published online.
The Harris campaign claims that Harris worked at a McDonald’s during the summer after her freshman year at Howard University in 1983. She is pictured when she was younger.
She is believed to have worked at the Central Avenue location in Alameda, California
Donald Trump, pictured serving fries at Pennsylvania McDonald’s this weekend, has consistently said that Kamala’s story about working at the fast food restaurant is:
Harris first claimed that she used to work at McDonald’s in college when she protested with workers against raising the minimum wage in 2019 as she ran for president.
“I worked at McDonald’s, I was a student when I worked at McDonald’s,” she said on social media that she worked making fries and serving ice cream.
In April 2024, she revisited the topic on the Drew Barrymore show, revealing that she “made fries” at the restaurant and that her regular meal was a quarter pounder with cheese.
“Yes, I worked at McDonalds when I was in school… making fries,” she said. “I did fries and the cashier.”
“I didn’t know that about you!” a surprise Barrymore replied.
Harris briefly repeated her claim when a reporter shouted a question Monday asking if she had ever worked there.
‘Did I do that? Yes, I did,” she said before getting into her car.
The Harris campaign also used the line that she worked at McDonald’s during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, after replacing President Joe Biden as the presidential candidate.
Although Harris has no proof of working at McDonalds, her husband Doug Emhoff talked about his own experiences working at a location and earning employee of the month.
“I still have the framed photo you just saw, and it came with a ring, gold arches and all,” he boasted.
Former President Bill Clinton also mentioned her experiences in his speech at the DNC Convention.
“I will be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s,” he joked.
The campaign still cannot provide evidence to support the vice president’s claim, such as a photo, a pay stub or a colleague who can confirm her employment.
An employee said, “I’m sorry, I have no information,” when DailyMail.com contacted the location where Harris claims to have worked on Monday to ask if Harris had ever worked at the franchise location.
A copy of her resume she submitted after college contains no information about her job at McDonald’s, according to to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Harris campaign has used her claim about her work at McDonald’s to demonstrate her working-class credentials.
“You have a vice president who always thought about the middle class. When she was in college, she had a job at McDonald’s while she was getting her degree,” deputy director of communications Brooke Goren told Democratic National Committee reporters in June.
Another employee called her journey from McDonald’s to the vice presidency “the incarnation of the American dream.”
After weeks of deriding Harris’ claim as false, Trump visited a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday, put on an apron and made several batches of fries in the kitchen.
He then served food to customers at the drive-thru service window.
Harris has tried to put the controversy behind her as she made a campaign stop at a more local Pennsylvania eatery, at Philadelphia’s Famous 4th Street Delicatessen.
Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris grabs food during a stop at the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen while campaigning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She ordered pastrami on rye and a piece of German chocolate cake, and gave a speech to the campaign volunteers.
“We’re all saying that we’re turning the page on an era when people have had to point fingers at each other and try to suggest that there are issues that divide us, when the most fundamental issues we care about unite us,” she said.